Working CLASS BiteS the Dust

Role of Media in the moulding of youth

Informal sector is ill paid and deprived of social security

The unorganised sector in India is massive and suffers as massively due to almost 400 million disadvantaged people (more than 85 per cent of India's total workforce), according to Arjun Sengupta Committee report. The sector is devoid of any minimum wage clause, healthy working environment, basic amenities, sanitation' et al. According to National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) almost 80 per cent of the workforce in the informal sector cannot even earn Rs.20 in a day! Out of 400 million informal workers, 280 million work in the rural sector including 220 million in agriculture. A strong women workforce of 120 million exists; but the same is rising as poverty perchance is driving women to take up laborious and hazardous jobs!

An overwhelming 96 per cent of women work in the informal sector export processing zones, as construction labours or as agricultural workers; and are generally in the lowest end in the value chain. It is not only workers in the informal sector who are outside the purview of legal framework like Minimum Wages Act or Factories Act, but even organised sector employees with ever increasing outsourcing and diminishing state protection ' 28 million of them are without any job protection. An increasing number of employers (from mostly unorganised sectors; and some from organised too) take advantage of the lack of stringent laws and regulations and regularly bypass several employee rights and benefits in the form of provident fund, gratuity and maternal benefits. In spite of some progresses through NREGA, the same didn't ensure a bonhomie between employers and employees, as more and more workers post NREGA were literally thrown into the corridors of unorganised sector.

The dichotomy between the government policy of loosening control and subsidy on industries on one hand, and protecting employee's security on the other, ended up in a draft bill being churned out (to provide security to the unorganised sector workers) by the UPA government; this is expected to be tabled in this monsoon session of Parliament! However, the legislation has been criticised by the trade unions, who would be sitting ducks if the legislation were to be passed, as the concept of Worker's Facilitation Centre (propagated by the legislation; and to be run by NGOs) is bereft of a powerful collective bargaining mechanism.

It has to be accepted that blind dependence on GDP growth as the only indicator for social wellbeing is flawed, and so long as the majority of our workers suffer, India can never truly advance.

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