Worn Thin in the Ward

As patient fees rise, private hospitals in Jammu and Kashmir pay nurses below legally mandated wages, defying Supreme Court and Health Ministry directives and fuelling a silent workforce crisis.

- Ummar Jamal

Healthcare workers here and across India watched closely as the Government of Jammu and Kashmir issued a formal order in December 2023 to revise pay and working conditions for nurses in private hospitals.

This was meant to align local practice with a decade-old judicial mandate and service rules developed by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The committee formed under that order was to offer guidance within thirty days.

But many months later, its findings and recommendations have not appeared in any public record. And this absence has amplified a longstanding issue that deserves sustained public focus.

Nurses are the frontline of patient care. They respond to emergencies, calm anxious family members, and perform critical procedures through long shifts.

In large private facilities nationwide, the average nurse earns between 20,000 and 50,000 per month depending on experience and hospital type.

But in Jammu and Kashmir, reported average pay for a nurse is approximately 22,000 per month. Some private duty nurses here are documented at similar rates.

Even those figures tell only part of the story.

Independent salary surveys across India show private hospital pay widely varies by city, bed strength, and ownership. Smaller clinics and nursing homes often maintain much lower wages.

In many such facilities the baseline can sit well below 20,000, creating a stark contrast with government hospital scales that often start above 30,000 for comparable roles.

This contrast was at the heart of a landmark judicial step taken on 29 January 2016, when the Supreme Court acknowledged widespread wage disparities and work-condition issues among nurses in private healthcare institutions.