Could you please explain how the article is conflating the minimum with wages actually paid?
It gives the number of H1Bs by wage level in Table 5. So, wage level 1 would be those with wages between 17 and 34 percentile, right?
This is precisely why most top tech companies in India only hire from the top colleges (IITs, BITS Pilani, IIITs, NITs, etc). It's usually not worth their time to even interview someone who did not graduate from one of these.
This is also evident in the compensation for new grads. CS grads from lower ranked colleges typically make $5k-$10k per year, while those from these good colleges make $20k-$40k per year(gross).
Exceptions exist of course.