ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF EMPLOYMENT IN UNORGANIZED SECTORS
subsidiary activities undertaken by the mining enterprises. The contribution of these subsidiary activities is assessed by analysing the annual reports of these enterprises. Mining activity is mostly in the public sector and the unorganized sector’s share within mining and quarrying is about 8%.
2. Social Security for Contractual Labour: Issues and Challenges
The first Indian National Commission on Labour (1966-69) defined the ‘unorganised sector work-force’ as “those workers who have not been able to organise themselves in pursuit of their common interest due to certain constraints like casual nature of employment, ignorance and illiteracy, small and scattered size of establishments”. It may also be pointed out that the organised sector comprises enterprises for which adequate data and information is available and same are covered with a legal framework. On the other hand, the unorganised sector refers to those enterprises whose activities and/or collection of data are not regulated under any legal provision or where any regular accounts are not maintained. Further, in the unorganised sector, in addition to the unincorporated proprieties or partnership enterprises, enterprises run by the cooperative societies, trusts, private and limited companies are also covered. The informal sector, therefore, can be considered as a sub-set of the unorganised sector.
The size of the unorganised sector is relatively large and will continue to be so in the years to come in view of the limited employment opportunities in the organised sector as also due to the outsourcing of a number of occupations/activities from the organised sector. The results of the Survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), carried out in 1999-2000, revealed that out of a total workforce of 397 million, only 28 million (seven per cent) workers are employed in the organised sector and the remaining 93 per cent are employed in the unorganised sector. The Survey also revealed that over a decade, employment in the organised sector has been almost stagnant or has slightly declined.
As per the Survey, there were 44.35 million enterprises and 79.71 million workers in the non-agricultural informal sector of the economy. Among these 25.01 million enterprises employing 39.74 million workers were in the rural areas whereas 19.34 million enterprises with 39.97 million workers were in the urban areas. The informal sector thus provides income-earning opportunity to a larger work force and a larger number of workers are getting their livelihood from the informal sector. The unorganised sector, therefore, has been playing a vital role in providing employment in the economy. It is estimated that the contribution of the unorganised sector to the net domestic product and its share in the total NDP at current prices is over 60 per cent. It accounts for over 40 per cent of our exports. In terms of savings also, its share in the gross domestic savings is significant
In view of the above, it is amply clear that the unorganised sector of the Indian economy provides employment to a large segment of labour force, including contractual labour, and that measures need to be taken to protect the workers from income insecurity, occupational insecurity and natural insecurity. The efforts and steps proposed to be undertaken by the state in this direction are appreciable. However, paucity of resources especially at the States’ level may be a hindrance to achieve the desired goals. Hence the role of the state should be that of a facilitator and at the same time to extend required assistance to voluntary agencies/associations, such as the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), to provide necessary social security to the workers of the unorganised sector.
Estimates of Informal Sector Employment:
By applying the revised definition of Informal Sector in the non-agricultural sector and using the approximations mentioned above in the agricultural sector, the employment in the informal sector has been worked out from the data sets of NSS 57th round survey (July 2000 to June 2004) on employment-unemployment. The estimates thus obtained were adjusted for census population as on First January, 2000. These adjusted estimates by sector and size are given in Table 1.
Table-1: Estimates of Employment in Informal Sector
Sl. No.
Sector
Estimated Number of Workers (Million)
Male
Female
Total
1.
1.1
1.2
Agriculture:
Rural
Urban
137.51
4.95
87.09
3.24
224.60
8.19
Total
142.46