Looking to the shadows
They work in almost every conceivable situation, along with their entire families. They do agricultural labour in season, and are artisans, head-loaders and construction workers. They sweat in brick-kilns and quarries, glass- or brassware operations. They toil for far more than eight hours at a stretch, yet they do not have the luxury of either weekend holidays or social-security benefits. They number around 300 million, yet they are not part of any organised system of work. They constitute the bulk of the workforce in independent India but are rarely written about. They are not on any list, register or muster roll. They are the anonymous contributors to the national income. They are, in short, the survivors of the other India at work – invisible to the glitzy, high-tech environs of the new India-on-the-move. Unorganised-sector workers contribute nearly 45 percent of the national income, and produce nearly 40 percent of industrial products. And their ranks are growing, in accordance with the omnipresent emphasis on short-term contractual employment.
According to the National Sample Survey Organisation report of 1999-2000, workers in the unorganised sector in India total 369 million; the corresponding figure in the organised sector is just 28 million. Within this category of unorganised work, those employed in agriculture take the lion's share at 237 million; construction numbers 17 million; manufacturing activities, 41 million; and 37 million each in trade and transport, and communication and services.
With the advancement of technology, the fragmentation of work has allowed for separate activities to be carried out in different places. The necessity of using skilled labour has also decreased, as each task can comprise of simple operations that can be performed by non-regular workers. For instance, over 50 percent of bangle production is done at homes by women and children – indicating the clear cost-advantage to the employer. Firozabad, in Uttar Pradesh, is famous for its bangle production – an unorganised-sector industry that is more than 200 years old. Here, workers used to learn on the job, working for free until they acquired the necessary skills. There was no formal process of recruitment or training. Even a significant amount of the furnace-related activity was done manually, although now motors ensure that workers produce more in eight hours than they used to in twelve.
Meanwhile, it has been a long-standing demand of trade unions that comprehensive legislation is required to cover unorganised-sector workers. Little, however, has emerged so far. The recommendations of the second National Labour Commission, constituted by the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, did not come out with any concrete provision for guaranteed minimum wage, social security or employment regulation. In fact, it was not until around the eve of the national elections in 2004 that the NDA government finally floated a social-security scheme whose coverage, while not grossly inadequate, was found wanting. Even this, however, was subsequently shelved.
Similarly, without any consultation with trade unions, the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government introduced a labour bill in 2005 that seeks to exempt employers from filing various returns, registers and statements, mostly pertaining to employees and employment conditions. Trade unions have opposed the draft bill. While two significant pieces of comprehensive legislation for unorganised-sector workers were introduced last year, both currently remain in the draft stage, requiring a significant amount of improvement.
The other India
The informal sector accounts for around 93 percent of the total working populace in India. A large section of these workers consist of women workers and child labour, and most belong to the socially 'backward' sections of society. Nonetheless, they have been dubbed the "ultimate entrepreneurs" by none other than the International Labour Organisation for their ability to sustain a livelihood with very little capital. This is an entrepreneurship that need not be envied, as the norms of 'decent work' do not apply to them.
A 2005 ILO report titled "The Other India at Work" visited 74 small- and micro-enterprises (a sophisticated term used to denote work in the unorganised sector) in ten clusters spread over several states of North India. The report's focus was on the informal manufacturing and artisan clusters that made up the "original manufacturing hubs", which have subsequently been diversified into a piecemeal variety of jobs. There is every reason to believe that their number is increasing. While many of the advantages of globalisation may have been taken up by the new manufacturing and service clusters – knitwear in Tiruppur, automotive components in Delhi and Madras, IT and back-office work in Bangalore and Gurgaon – the ILO report found that the bulk of the informal sector remains languishing in abysmal working conditions.
Although around half of the locations surveyed were found to be officially registered, employers preferred to remain unregistered to avoid government interference (read: labour inspection) and tax liabilities. In fact, 75 percent of the owners of unregistered ventures stated that they expected higher incomes by operating within the informal economy. In addition, the survey also found that much of the work subcontracted to the micro-enterprises was from larger, generally registered enterprises. This is a relatively recent development, having sprung up over the past decade-and-a-half. Whether this was done as cost-cutting or to escape labour legislation is not clear, but these small enterprises have clearly been discovered as a pool of cheap, casual labour for larger businesses.
Of those labourers whom the ILO surveyed, nearly two-thirds were from micro-enterprises employing from one to five workers; over half of these also had a system of subcontracting work. The quality of employment was found to be poor in terms of wages, social protection, and conditions of employment and work environment, while the level of skills and technology was also low. Although no employer reported child labour, the researchers found many instances of child workers engaged in hazardous work. While most employers and employees appeared unaware of the adverse impact of the poor work environment and occupational safety, both employer and employee showed a keenness to improve working conditions.
For the moment, however, this is a working population almost completely devoid of any social-safety net. For most of these workers, there was no arrangement compensation in case of disability due to work-related accidents. Salaries were deducted during sick days, and medical expenses had to be covered by the workers (or their families) themselves. Only four percent were covered by the Employees State Insurance Scheme, which is stipulated for any employer with a certain number of employees. Not a single worker expected to receive unemployment benefits in the event of joblessness. Labourers said that they would work until the age of 51, after which they expected their family members to support them.
Slow attention
In September 2004, soon after the UPA government took over power, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector was set up, keeping in line with a commitment spelt out in the National Common Minimum Programme four months earlier. This body was supposed to examine the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill of 2004, which had been prepared by the previous government. The commission itself, which is not a statutory body but rather an initiative from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office, was a response to a longstanding demand by trade unions for protective legislation for the unorganised-sector workers.
In the meantime, the National Advisory Council, the body set up in 2004 to oversee the Common Minimum Programme, had also drafted a social-security bill aimed at the unorganised sector. That bill was found wanting on several grounds, particularly in terms of the very limited number of people it sought to cover. The commission subsequently decided that instead of a single bill, two separate bills were needed to deal with what it called the "heterogeneous and highly differentiated universe". Thus, in mid-2005, there emerged two pieces of draft legislation: the Unorganised Sector Workers Social Security Bill, and the Unorganised Sector Workers (Conditions of Work and Livelihood Promotion) Bill. Together, an estimated 300 million workers could be covered within five years.
The first bill, dealing with social security, is more or less comprehensive in that it will cover all workers in the unorganised sector with a monthly income of INR 5000 or below. This will include wage-earners, self-employed (including small and marginal farmers) and home-based workers. In addition, coverage will be extended to casual unorganised-sector workers. The only problem with this legislation had been its approach to the identification of employers. Here the suggestions of some of the trade unions have been accepted, such that wherever the employer is not identifiable and the worker is compelled to change jobs frequently, the contribution of the employer should be borne by the appropriate government or board (state or central), or shared between the state and central governments.
More troubling has been the second bill. Since this draft was made public, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-aligned Centre of Indian Trade Unions has suggested several improvements. These include more specific and concrete provisions on "protection against retrenchment/dismissal", appropriate compensation, working hours, labour inspection, appropriate dispute/grievance settlement machinery and punishment for contravention. It has also demanded that workers in the unorganised sector be given the benefits that have already been mandated under other industrial legislation, such as the Trade Union, Minimum Wages, and Maternity Benefit acts.
The hope for these two draft bills is in creating what is called the 'social floor', for providing a measure of social security and ensuring a core of minimum acceptable standards of decent work. Though it may be that the unorganised sector in India is being taken up seriously for the first time, much depends on how keen the government machinery is to implement even the minimum currently envisaged. While the bills were postponed last December, it is now hoped that they will be taken up during the monsoon session. If anything, the hurdles are the financial burden the government would have to bear in terms of enforcement and monitoring. With the existing labour-law enforcement machinery, after all, simply passing this new legislation would be the easy part.