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PROTECTING THE VULNERABLEFine tuning the identification process

Team Details :: REDEE

University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Panjab University,

ChandigarhAnshul GoyalGinni KakkarGoyam JainNeha SrivastavaSanya Gupta

Understanding the problem

37.8

46.4

63.5

91.2 92.4 93.1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1999-2000 2004-2005 2009-2010

Formal All

Protecting the Vulnerable: Providing social welfare to informal sector workers

The percentage of informal workers in the non-agricultural sector has steadily increased.

The percentage of such workers with access to social security has declined.

Informalisation has grown even in the organized sector, and even in the public sector and in public ltd. companies.

Only 6% of unorganized workers are estimated a receiving

protective social security

Social protection measures are critical for informal workers, particularly for women workers, to protect them from contingencies and deprivation.

Current Scenario


Over 290 million, that is 92% is in

the unorganized

sector

Of the 317 million

working population

Low wages, insecurity of

work and income

Chief characteristics

Poor and hazardous

working conditions

Working conditions

are damaging

and detrimental

Condition of Women

Women workers are

largely concentrated

in Informal sectors

Social Security

Health Security

Food Security

Shelter Security

Education Security

Current Scenario


Unorganized Workers Social Security Act

•Legislated in 2008, the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act, appended 10 schemes.

Health Security•The NRHM, 2006, aimed at strengthening infrastructure,

provision of qualified personnel and primary health services in the rural areas.

Rashtriya SwathyaBima Yojna

• Initiated in 2008, it is a health care insurance package that covers up to `30,000 for BPL card holders

Aadhaar

•The nation wide UID project, aims at providing UID against biometric and demographic information.

•Already enrolled 250 million, it aims to enroll 1.2 billion by 2014.

•The Aadhaar project has widely helped in implementing direct transfers, NREGA scholarships, and has also empowered women.

Key Issues


Target Groups

•Designing simple and easily accessible social protection schemes for the target groups.

•There have been a lot of complaints, and difficulties that include the demand of a number of documents to prove eligibility, or the inconvenience of foregoing a day’s wage standing in long queues.

Lack of Technology

•When it comes to covering a large number of people, the traditional paper based methods are very slow

•Often the target group is illiterate and find it difficult to understand the documentary requirements

•Traditional methods are time consuming for the beneficiaries and entails loss of time that could be utilized for earning daily wage

•Traditional methods are more susceptible to abuse and corruption, and monitoring and evaluation is more difficult.

Women’s Advancement

•An additional challenge is the recognition of all the barriers to women’s advancement in the labor market and conscious mainstreaming of gender needs into all aspects of policy and program design for social protection.

•Health risks (e.g. infant mortality, disease)

•Life cycle risks (e.g. childbearing, divorce, widowhood)

•Household economic risks (e.g. increased expenditure for social obligations such as marriage and funerals)

•Social risks (e.g. exclusion, domestic violence, crime)


Migration

•Migration of informal workers poses another major consideration

•Often branded as Bangladeshis, and not enrolled in electoral rolls, migrant workers do not have a strong political voice.

•Politicians are therefore in a position to ignore their needs and lack the will to improve their conditions.

Corporatization and Privatization

•This presents a major threat for women informal workers such as the waste pickers.

•The reason for many women waste pickers to join this occupation is the flexibility that it offers and the absence of a commanding boss. But with privatization, both these factors, i.e. flexibility and the absence of commanding figure are lost, the work conditions remain the same, and male dominance also increases.

Large number of Schemes

•Still another issue is the convergence of several similar or related schemes on social protection.

•There is no contesting on the fact that clearly demarcated schemes, which can be clubbed together, are more effective in benefitting the recipients and also discourages leakages and corruption.

•Yet this is not happening in reality, as the respective stakeholders involved do not want to hurt their interests by discontinuing the practice of running separate schemes. The challenge here is to demonstrate that the interests of stakeholders will not be harmed, and that the convergence will further facilitate the implementation of programs.


•A high determination and commitment within the political system is essentialStrong Political Commitment

•Public expenditure on health in India is currently about 1.2 % of GDP, however more than 2.5% is recommended.

Need for and increased public health sector expenditure:

•Schemes are required to be made simple and effective making them easily accessible by the already troubled beneficiariesSimple social protection schemes

•Technology can improve the quality of the schemes, performance in delivery, bringing transparency and better monitoring and evaluation of mechanisms

Advanced Technology

•To address the heterogeneity of the informal sector, Decentralization is required to take advantage of local strengths and knowledge

Decentralization

Need of the hour


•RTI needs to be extended to cover private agencies that are being employed by the government to provide public servicesTransparency in schemes

•Compulsory provision of support services such as child care centers for children of working women

•Such initiatives will promote the well-being of the child and reduce child labor

• This would also enable women to take up formal, full time occupations

Recognition of women’s dual responsibility

•Convergence of related schemes is critical for better delivery of programs and to decrease the scope of corruption in implementation

• The challenge is to bring the separate stakeholders of various schemes together against the common agenda

Convergence of related schemes

•Poor people, who migrate from rural to urban areas have absolutely no rights when they arrive.

•They remain marginalized and struggle to obtain any proof of their identity

•Hence schemes must provide support to this most vulnerable population

Recognizing migrants

•Besides the general insecurities, the informal sector workers face additional threats such as, seasonal nature of work and privatization and corporatization

•Skills training programs may be provided to women to enhance their employment opportunities.

More employment opportunities


What we are suggesting here is to implement an alternative application method, that involves

the more available part of the target groupP

rob

lem

s

One of the major problems associated with social schemes is that the target group is unavailable directly.

And, even if they are available, they might not be willing to spend a day’s wage of work for standing in queues

Hence, alternative methods are required to bring out the larger numbers

So

cia

l Se

cu

rity

AC

T 2

00

8

Despite the 2008 Act, there are no legal bindings and provisions of rights to work and entitlements under it.

Therefore, this law, which does not deal with unemployment, its regulations and wages is rather incomplete and dysfunctional

In fact such a comprehensive act remains a dream in India.

The

Urb

an

Po

or

Most of the present government schemes, including NREGA, cater to only registered rural poor. However, a large number of urban poor still remain out of its shadow.

Additionally, NREGA doesn’t have a common wage in different states and limits itself to only 100 day’s work for registered workers.

An alternative approach

Implementation

• Finally, the ID cards can be issued, or the individuals can be called on a predefined day, to scrutinize or issue cards.

Application Process

• Filling up the application procedure through those channels, such as asking students to fill in details

Documentation

• Surveying and Documenting information, through those children

Identification

• Identifying the target groups, by alternative methods such as from their children studying in government schools


What can be essentially extracted from the previous slides, is that a simpler implementation

system is required, which should be universal and requires lesser physical involvement of the

target groups.

The foremost problem that comes with the informal sector is the lack of a consistent database

The major problem with existing schemes is the complexity of the enrollment process

Alternative measures are required to improve the process, as well the number of physical documents required for the process

Similar schemes must be converged keeping aside the political interests

Education, if not directly, but can be provided to the next generation, so as to improve the level of participation


References

1. NSS data from 1999-00, 2004-05 & 2009-10 employment surveys

2. Srivastava, R (2012), “Engendering Social Protection for Informal Economy Workers”

Power Point Presentation at the GEPD forum V. PPT

3. Das, J & Leino, J (2011), “Evaluating the RSBY: Lessons from an Experimental

Information Campaign” in Economic & Political Weekly, August 6, 2011 Vol. XLVI no.

32, pp 85-93


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