NOTES 39 fits, the financial conditions of the establishment or availability of workmen at lower wages3 Again the Supreme Court observed in the case of the Crown Aluminium Works Vs Workmen : No industry has a right to exist unless it is able to pay its workmen at least a bare minimum wage.4 Therefore, it emerges that at the floor level there is the minimum wage below which the employer must not go and at the ceiling level there is the living wage which is the goal to be achieved. What is the minimum wage that the employees have been demanding throughout these years ? It is the Committee on Fair Wages which, for the first time, came out with a reasonably precise definition. The Committee defines the minimum wage as follows : The minimum wage must provide not merely for the sustenance of life but for the preservation of the efficiency of the workers by providing for some measure of education, medical requirement and amenities.5 Its observation is that there is under any set of economic circumstances a minimum that a worker must have. This minimum, according to the Committee's definition, is 'need-based5. According to A Fonseca, the payment of a need-based wage has, therefore, to justify itself on two important counts. The first arises out of the actual basic need of the worker for such elementary necessities as food, clothing, housing, light and fuel and miscellaneous factors. This is an investment in manpower. The second is called for by the requirements implied in the job, and known through process of job analysis and evaluation. It is expected that these complementary but sometimes apparently disparate requirements will blend into a system that will procure for the individual worker a wage to cover his needs and at the same time make it worthwhile for his employer to keep him in employment because the worker's marginal productivity will tend to equal his wage. In India, moreover, we have a planned economy with a very definite objective of achieving a certain level of welfare. It is from the determination to satisfy this objective that the need-based wage has been conceived and is meant to be implemented. The need-based wage is viewed in real terms and linked very closely with consumption. It obliges the planner to allocate a larger proportion of available resources to the production of the consumption goods required by the industrial workers, especially foodgrains. Such consumption fulfils a two-fold purpose. It satisfies the minimum nutritional requirements of the worker and at the same time it sustains and improves the efficiency of the labour force in turning out the national product. In fact these two aspects are fulfilled simultaneously6 (Emphasis added). The claim of the Central Government employees for a need-based