Author:

• Anumeha Yadav

This study is the outcome of the experience of the Shramajivi Mahila Samity, an independent, non-party mass organisation of mainly rural working women in West Bengal. Shramajivi Mahila Samity works on gender discrimination and rights of women. It does not run any direct income generating programmes. However, in the 28 years of our work in rural Bengal, we have seen women contributing in myriad ways to the economies of their families. They are an irreplaceable element in the survival of their families, often making the difference between starvation and subsistence. We have always been surprised by the official statistics which show West Bengal as having one of the lowest female labour participation rates in the country. It has led us to believe that there is a gross misunderstanding about women’s work and the importance of unpaid work in the economy of a poor household. In the past few decades, we have seen more and more women in rural Bengal joining paid work. We have seen that men are migrating and the agricultural labour force in many areas consists now almost entirely of women. We were therefore surprised to read about a debate on falling female labour particpation rate at the national level. It did not match our own work experiences. It has led us to the present study, which we hope will be able to shed some light on what is actually happening to women from the rural working class in West Bengal.

Author:

• Anuradha Talwar

In India, the relative importance of the handloom sector, one of the largest employers following agriculture, has been declining for last few decades. The All India Handloom Census data for the year 2009-10 however showed a rather modest decline in the number of weavers in West Bengal, in contrast to a 33% decline at the national level in the same year. But share of handloom income in total household income for the weaver households in the state has decreased significantly pointing to considerable occupational diversification among them. Based on a qualitative field study in three districts of West Bengal — namely, Hooghly, Nadia and Purba Bardhaman — this essay presents findings related to the condition of handloom weavers in West Bengal and in the light of the findings, examines two issues— intra-sector and inter-sector mobility of labour as well as weavers’ response to changing market conditions. The paper argues for a more labour-focused approach in place of currently dominant tradition-focused understanding of the sector.

Authors:

• Rajesh Bhattacharya
• Sarmishtha Sen

This study focuses on the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal-Tapukara-Neemrana industrial belt in Haryana and Rajasthan, which is an important ​‘node’ or part of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and a major destination of capital in the last few decades. The study is based on primary survey work of qualitative nature of over 6 months from September 2017 to March 2018. Primary respondents are workers of different segments, plant-level Trade Union leaders and Trade Union activists of the belt, with some inputs from secondary literature, workers magazine and data published by the companies and the government.

Authors:

• Amit
• Nayanjyoti

After independence in 1947, India embarked on an ambitious path of industrialisation, following the standard modern developmental prescription drawn from the experience of the so-called developed countries. Since the inauguration of the reform era in 1991, this model of development, duly globalised, has been reinforced by the decisions made by metropolitan policy elites both within and beyond India.

Author:

• Aseem Shrivastava

The policy framework in India has provided support to the micro and small enterprises. In 2006, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Act 2006 came into existence (msme​.gov​.in). This Act aimed at promoting and developing micro, small and medium enterprises. In India, the MSME sector’s contribution to GDP was 17 percent of GDP during 2004-05 to 2009-10. More recently, a comprehensive policy called the National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015 came into existence. This policy supersedes the National Skill Development Policy of 2009. The vision statement of the policy is ​“To create an ecosystem of empowerment by Skilling on a large Scale at Speed with high Standards and to promote a culture of innovation based entrepreneurship which can generate wealth and employment so as to ensure Sustainable livelihoods for all citizens in the country.” Recent policies such as demonetization and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) have created a setback for the micro enterprises that operated in the informal economy based mainly on cash transactions.

Authors:

• Jeemol Unni
• Ravikiran Naik

Despite its weak performance in terms of job creation in recent years, the organised manufacture sector remains vital to employment policy. This paper investigates the aggregate trends in this sector, in employment, output, labour-capital ratio, as well as wage share and wage rates at the three-digit NIC level over a long period from 1983 to 2016 using the Annual Survey of Industries data. We show that three distinct sub-periods can be identified within the overall period. Further, using shift-share decomposition we show that most of the decline in the L/K ratio can be explained by within industry changes. Finally, we analyze industries with respect to their capacity to deliver job growth as well as wage growth.

Authors:

• Amit Basole
• Amay Narayan

Preponderance of small (that is, less than 10 workers) sized manufacturing establishments in India is said to reject their inability to growth in size on account of prohibitive cost of regulatory compliance (and the associated corruption). Similarly, the ​“U” shaped (or bi-modal) distribution of manufacturing employment by size of establishment or enterprise – popularly termed the ​“missing middle” – is argued to be the outcome of the rigid labour laws, adversely a acting productivity growth. Do the foregoing propositions represent hard facts, or artefacts of mis-measurement and misinterpretation of the evidence? The paper contends that it is the latter: the observed employment distribution by size is more likely to reject the widespread and growing evasion of o3cial registration, and under-reporting or mis-representation in the administrative data. Further, the wide schism observed between the organised (formal) and unorganised (informal) labour markets represents persistence of surplus labour, and organisational dualism – à la Hella Myint — on account of technology and organisation of production in the modern sector; and perhaps not on account of policy induced rigidities in the labour market, as many contend.

Author:

• R.Nagaraj

This paper attempts to explore the avenues for future jobs given the impact of technology in the form of internet of things, robots, cloud computing, nano technology, automization of manufacturing etc. and the measures in place to address these challenges. The paper explores the labour market from the supply side, the demographic advantage that India has along with the constraints involved in converting the advantage into a dividend. The demographic spread of the labour force is geographically different in that the South we have an ageing workforce with longer life expectancy while in the North and Central India the new entrants to the labour market is the youth. The demographic advantage is concentrated in the North. This is then addressed against the backdrop of the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on jobs and the skill gaps that exist in addressing them. The skill gap therefore needs to be addressed differently. While the policy focus is on skilling/up-skilling and re-skilling the emphasis of each of these components differ according to the geographical spread of the demographic advantage. There should be continuous upgrading of the training curriculum to incorporate the technological advancements. More number of youth should be motivated to opt for vocational courses that enhance their skill set and employability to enable India convert its demographic advantage into dividend.

Author:

• A. Srija

Analyses of the Indian labour market have been been characterized by the lack of recognition of one major fallacy or myth, two looming crises, and a silent tragedy resulting from unrealized expectations. The fallacy is that 12 mn join the Indian labour force every year, looking for work. The first of the two looming crisis is that millions need and wish to agriculture behind in search of non-agricultural work, but at least since 2011-12 they are not finding enough work to pull them away from agriculture. The second looming crisis is that youth are joining the age group of 14+ in growing numbers, each year with higher and higher levels of education, and are not finding nonagricultural work – despite their aspiration being only for such work. The final concern, which is simmering rather than reached the ​‘ready-to-boil-over’ stage, is the sub-group of the second looming crisis of youth who are getting better educated, is for girls who have reached gender parity in secondary education, and hence aspire for nonagricultural work. All three categories of workers have plenty among them who are disheartened workers, for whom there are too few non-agricultural opportunities.

Author:

• Santosh Mehrotra

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides 100 days of work in a year for every rural household at a minimum wage. Because of MGNREGA, for the first time in the country, a transaction-based management information system (MIS) has been made available in the public domain, a feather in the cap of transparency. An essential safeguard in MGNREGA is delay compensation to be paid when workers do not receive wages within 15 days of completion of work. Despite several attempted measures, payment delays are rampant and the method of calculating delay compensation is flawed leading to massive under-calculation of the true payable compensation. By analysing over 90 lakh transactions for the financial year 2016 – 2017 across 10 states, we observe that only 21% of the payments were made on time and the central government alone was taking an average of over 50 days to electronically transfer wages. On aggregate, in our sample, while the true total delay compensation payable is about Rs. 36 crores, only about Rs. 15.6 crores is being calculated in the MIS. The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has acknowledged the correctness of the findings and the Supreme Court of India has also issued Orders to the MoRD based on these findings.

Authors:

• Rajendran Narayanan
• Sakina Dhorajiwala
• Rajesh Golani