Employment with Social Security in Informal Sector: CASES from Various Sources

Social security legislations for organized sector in India include, Employees’ provident fund and the miscellaneous provisions act, 1952; Employees state insurance Act, 1948; Maternity benefits Act, 1971; Workmen compensation Act, 1923; Payment of gratuity Act, 1971. However, the welfare schemes for the unorganized sector is widely fragmented and scattered. In Public Enterprises too it was found most of the non-executive jobs are outsourced through contract labourers. This can be one reason for increase in informal labour. Where, the implementation of ILO convention is in query. Therefore, this stiudy attempted to find out how informal labour puts into practice of the social security measures which can guard the ILO conventions. Study findings threw light on the Government schemes for informal sector, like, Atal Pension Yojana; Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana; Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana; Micro Units Development Refinance Agency Bank; MGNREGA; National Skill Development Mission. In conclusion the study also joined other studies which focus on the need for a holistic approach to deal with the issue of informal sector employment, where informal sector includes, large number of poorly educated labour force, following traditional occupations, with poor financial inclusion, and, lacking motivational skills. Here, registration of micro and small enterprises can be encouraged where, it would benefit access to finance, better infrastructure, market information, government incentives, a platform for formal association, providing them legal framework, efforts to overcome uncertainty in financial returns and safety nets for them as well as their workers. To large extent this can help to overcome challenges to informal sector not only in unorganized sector but also arrest the growth of informal employment in organized enterprises and improve the workforce bargaining power to settle for decent wages, social security and job security. The study was based on secondary data sources following the content analysis method.