Search

Begin New Search Topic Labor Issues Political Geography India Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 5 Years

1. Cooperative Federalism in India: Towards an Inter-State Migration Council

Author:
Chinmay Tumbe
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Migration in India has tended to create friction—between the Union government and State governments, and between different State governments. This chapter reviews the nature of migration in India and its relationship with nativist sentiments and political conflicts. It argues for the establishment of an inter-State migration council, either nested within the existing framework of the Inter-State Council or led by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, that would uphold the constitutional provisions on mobility, lead on the collection and dissemination of statistics on inter-State migration, promote the portability of social security benefits, and work towards resolving migration-related disputes in the federal system
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, and Cooperative Federalism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

2. Cooperative Federalism in Indi: Federal Aspects of India's Emerging Internal Migration Governance Frameworks

Author:
Mukta Naik
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The exodus of millions of migrants during the 2020 Covid lockdowns resulted in an uptick in migrant-inclusive policy initiatives. Leaning on concepts developed in migration studies and organizational theory, this paper analyses emergent policy responses with a focus on the role of government. Without a coherent and explicit approach to governing migration from the Centre, State governments have actively worked towards improving governance responses to migrants. The location of initiatives outside of the nodal State labour department, convergence between departments and bilateral arrangements between States demonstrate how horizontal and vertical boundaries within the governance system were bridged innovatively by temporary orders, enterprising bureaucrats, state-society collaborations and by leveraging hitherto under-utilized provisions in existing schemes. The paper highlights migration governance as an example where the rearrangement of federal relationships under crisis conditions has offered new policy imaginations. A nascent transition away from a centralist model of migration governance has emerged, which can be accelerated and sustained by institutionalizing successful initiatives, including boundary-spanning mechanisms.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Governance, and Cooperative Federalism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

3. Understanding Enablers and Barriers to Social Protection of Sanitation Workers

Author:
Anju Dwivedi, Abhinav Kumar, and Shubhagato Dasgupta
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
There has been a strong focus on improving the sanitation situation in the last decade in India due to the Government of India’s flagship program called Swachh Bharat Mission. In the last decade, the country witnessed an increase in the number of toilets, Sewer Treatment Plants and Faecal Sludge Treatment plants. The demand for sanitation services has spotlighted the issue of sanitation workers too. Sanitation workers are vital to the provision of safe sanitation for all the residents in the city. However, hazardous work conditions and low social status, coupled with discrimination, long working hours, and lack of social protection, accentuate their vulnerabilities. Recognizing the high level of social and economic vulnerability and discrimination faced by sanitation workers, the Government of India (GoI) and several state governments have initiated many programs and schemes, including social protection measures for Sanitation workers. The main objective of the research is to identify the enablers and barriers to availing social protection benefits (in the form of healthcare, insurance, pensions, and allowances) for sanitation workers. The study examines the social protection coverage of formal and informal sanitation workers in Dhenkanal, Odisha. Semi-structured interviews with Sanitation workers employed with ULB, private contractors and Area Level Federation were conducted to understand the challenges faced by Sanitation workers in accessing social protection. In addition, key informant interviews were also carried out with leaders from employee unions of sanitation workers, ULB officials, and other stakeholders, including private contractors. The study recognizes enablers such as a favourable policy environment, capacity enhancement, collaboration with other stakeholders, and barriers like low awareness, inadequate capacities, and lack of institutional convergence mechanisms to improve socioeconomic well-being and promote sanitation workers’ safety, dignity, and social protection. This study highlights the disparity in working conditions and employment benefits received by regular and contractual sanitation workers, the need for creating a formal grievance redressal mechanism and undertaking measures to build the capacity of sanitation workers. The report presents key recommendations emerging from the study, such as greater involvement of employee unions, convergence with other departments providing welfare benefits to sanitation workers, improving grievance redressal mechanisms, and creating more awareness and information dissemination to sanitation workers on different social protection measures.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Protection, and Sanitation Workers
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

4. How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?

Author:
Rosa Abraham and Anand Shrivastava
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE) Consumer Pyramid Household surveys have emerged as an important source of regular labour market data for India. Given the differences in methods in data collection between the CMIE and official employment sources, it becomes exceedingly important to establish some comparability between the government and the CMIE datasets. With the release of the official labour surveys, Periodic Labour Force Surveys for 2017-18, we now have an overlap between the official datasets and CMIE datasets. In this paper, we examine the extent of comparability of labour force estimates from these two datasets. We find that employment estimates for men are broadly comparable. However, for women, there is a consistent divergence with CMIE estimates of women’s workforce participation lower than that of NSS-PLFS. We explore the points of divergence in the measurement of women’s work and hypothesise some potential reasons for this difference. We find that irrespective of the reference period used in the PLFS estimation of employment statuses, there is no convergence with the CMIE employment estimate for women’s employment. Moreover, the mismatch in CMIE-PLFS estimates occurs across all types of women’s employment and irrespective of what reference period of employment (in official data) is used.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, and Employment
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

5. Labour incomes in India: A comparison of PLFS and CMIE-CPHS data

Author:
Mrinalini Jha and Amit Basole
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a need for high frequency employment and income data to gauge the nature and extent of shock and recovery from month to month. Lack of such high frequency household-level data from official sources has forced researchers to rely almost entirely on the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). Recently, the CPHS has been criticised for missing poor and vulnerable households in its sample. In this context, it becomes important to develop a detailed understanding of how comparable CPHS estimates are to other more familiar sources. We examine the comparability of monthly labour income estimates for the pre-pandemic year (2018-19) for CPHS and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). Across different methods and assumptions, as well as rural/urban locations, CPHS mean monthly labour earnings are anywhere between 5 percent to 50 percent higher than corresponding PLFS estimates. In addition to the sampling concerns raised in the literature, we point to differences in the way employment and income are captured in the two surveys as possible causes of these differences. While CPHS estimates are always higher, it should also be emphasized that the two surveys agree on some stylized facts regarding the Indian workforce. An individual earning INR 50,000 per month lies in the top 5 percent of the income distribution in India as per both surveys. Second, both PLFS and CPHS show that half the Indian workforce earns below the recommended National Minimum Wage.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Survey, Data, COVID-19, and Income
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

6. Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India’s Informal Workers Through the Pandemic

Author:
Paaritosh Nath, Nelson Mandela, and Aishwarya Gawali
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector. Our results show that six months after the hard lockdown, one out five persons were still out of work. Conditioned on being employed prior to the lockdown and having lost work during the lockdown, we find that urban respondents, women, workers above sixty and graduates were significantly less likely to recover from the shock. A similar exercise carried out for women workers showed that middle aged women, never married women and women who were not-literate women or educated up until primary and middle school were significantly more likely to recover from job loss. Older women, those located in urban areas and Muslim women were on the other hand significantly less likely to recover from the job loss. Earnings on the whole were half of what they used to be prior to the pandemic. Some better off workers shifted to more precarious types of employment. Given the fall in earnings poorer worker households were forced to borrow and the amount of loan taken was multiple times their average monthly income. In the context of loss in employment and reverse migration, the survey results show a substantial unmet demand for work under the MGNREGA programme even after the lockdown was lifted. We conclude that despite a partial recovery in the subsequent period, the pandemic induced lockdown has undermined the material conditions for subsistence for a large segment within the informal economy. Moreover, any attempts made to re-imagine what a social protection programme for the informal economy should look like must take into account the segments most susceptible to an economic shock on their livelihoods.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Survey, COVID-19, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

7. Did the nation-wide implementation of e-FMS in MGNREGS result in reduced expenditures? A re-examination of the evidence

Author:
Deepti Goel, J. V. Meenakshi, and Zaeen De Souza
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper revisits a part of the analysis by Banerjee et al. (2020), in which they examine the consequences of the nation-wide scale up of reforms to the funds management system (e-FMS) in India’s national workfare programme, using a two-way fixed effects specification. They report a substantial 19 percent reduction in labour expenditures. We exploit the recent literature that highlights the limitations of the TWFE estimator in the presence of staggered roll out and effect a Goodman-Bacon decomposition of the TWFE coefficient, to pinpoint sources of identifying variation. We undertake a detailed examination of subsamples of six constituent and valid DiDs based on timing of treatment that are averaged into the TWFE coefficient to identify heterogeneity in treatment effects. This disaggregated subsample analysis does not support the conclusion of any reductions in MGNREGS labour expenditures, suggesting that the TWFE coefficient based on the full sample is indeed biased.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Governance, Public Finance, and E-Government
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

8. Frontline Workers and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Author:
Gokulnath Govindan
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a global disaster that took countless lives, many of whom were frontline functionaries deployed to contain this crisis. As a result, the Indian state, unlike before, had to acknowledge the risk that accompanied their workers in this crisis. They promised them vaccination, health & life insurance, amongst other material benefits to protect, insure and motivate such cadres. The paper attempts to study these promises, in particular its vaccination and insurance policies, to better understand what it meant to be a frontline worker in this crisis. Did the Indian administration account for all at-risk workers and their context, or did they simply exclude many of them in their policies ? The essay, at its core, will answer this question as it examines the Indian state’s capacity to celebrate its frontline workers.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Crisis Management, Risk, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

9. Time Use Data in Feminist Political Economy Analyses: Gender and Class in the Indian Time Use Survey

Author:
Sirisha Naidu and Smriti Rao
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
The literature on agrarian change in India has largely employed class categories based upon data on land, assets and occupational status. Land and asset data tend to exist at the level of households, while occupation categories have neither fully counted reproductive labour nor accounted for diversified livelihood strategies. As a result, categorizations of class in the literature on agrarian change tend to collapse women’s class relations into those of male household heads. The recent completion of India’s first ever national time use survey provides an opportunity to address these longstanding gaps. This paper examines whether and how the 2019 Indian Time Use data lends itself to an understanding of class relations that i) can better accommodate an expanded conception of work as including reproductive labor ii) better accommodate the highly diversified livelihoods of rural Indians iii) better grasp the articulation of caste and gender differentiated labor processes with capital. In this paper, we are able to show i) and ii). The third goal is somewhat stymied by the absence of qualitative data that contextualize time use data. We compare the class relational mapping obtained from time use data with that obtained from land and occupational data and examine the possibilities and limits of employing time use data to deepen feminist political economy analyses of agrarian change.
Topic:
Agriculture, Political Economy, Labor Issues, Feminism, Caste, and Gender
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

10. Work and Social Reproduction in Rural India: Lessons from Time-Use Data

Author:
Smita Ramnarain, Sirisha Naidu, Anupama Uppal, and Avanti Mukherjee
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Even as the literature on work in the Global South acknowledges the importance of forms of non-waged work, it has not sufficiently incorporated consideration of the labor of social reproduction. We propose understanding work through four conceptual dyads: waged productive labor, non-waged productive labor, waged reproductive labor, and non-waged reproductive labor. Through an in-depth description of three specific cases from a Time Use Survey we conducted in rural Punjab, India, we argue not only that all four dyads are required to encompass the world of work, but that this more expansive conceptualization can help us produce richer analyses of the intersections of class, caste, and gender.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Class, Caste, Gender, and Social Reproduction
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

11. Labour Reforms in the Indian State of Rajasthan: a boon or a bane?

Author:
Sourabh Paul and Diti Goswami
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The authors examine the impact of labour law deregulations in the Indian state of Rajasthan on plant employment and performance. In 2014, after a long time, Rajasthan was the first Indian state that introduced labour reforms in the Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Factories Act (1948), the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970), and the Apprentices Act (1961). Exploiting this unique quasi-natural experiment, the authors apply a difference-in-difference framework using the Annual Survey of Industries longitudinal data of India’s manufacturing establishments. Their results show that reforms had an unintended consequence of the decline in labour use. Also, worryingly, the flexibility resulted in a disproportionate decline in the directly employed worker. Evidence suggests that the reforms positively impact the value-added and productivity of the establishments. The strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and reform structure. These findings prove robust to a set of specifications.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Reform, Employment, and Regulation
Political Geography:
India

12. Can a Machine Learn Democracy?

Author:
Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala, and Chakradhar Buddha
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides up to 100 days of work in a year for every rural household at a minimum wage. The Act has several landmark worker-centric provisions. For the implementation 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. However, there are several critical questions to be examined in this regard. Our main focus in this article is to explore the tensions between technocracy and democratic values/participation in the context of MGNREGA and its associated MIS. We use our action research on information-based interventions in several states to examine whether the MGNREGA MIS incorporates democratic values, whether it has been inclusive or if it has widened the existing inequities. We use specific examples to illustrate how such an information system has been used to subvert the legal rights of workers. We underscore that technological interventions, with a compassionate human-centred design are potentially powerful tools for transparency, accountability, and grievance redressal. However, technology alone can neither enhance participatory democracy nor reduce socio-economic inequalities.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Democracy, Employment, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
India

13. Tracking Employment Trajectories during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Indian Panel Data

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, we track a panel of households prior to the lockdown (in December 2019), during the lockdown (in April 2020) and afterwards (in August 2020) to investigate the employment and income effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated containment measures. We identify four distinct employment experiences during the pandemic for those who were in the workforce just prior to the lockdown: no loss of employment (“No effect”), loss of employment followed by recovery (“Recovery”), loss of employment with no recovery (“No recovery”), and a delayed loss of employment (“Delayed job loss”). Overall, 54% of individuals experienced no job loss, while 30% lost work in April but recovered by August. 12% had not recovered employment as of August 2020. We analyse how these trajectories vary across different social and economic characteristics to quantify contractions and recovery in the labour market and the extent to which the vulnerabilities vary across different social groups, employment arrangements, and industries. We find that women were substantially more likely to lose employment as well as less likely to recover employment. Job loss was also more severe for lower castes as compared to intermediate and upper castes and for daily wage workers as compared to regular wage workers. Younger workers were particularly vulnerable to job loss compared to older workers. Having lost employment in April, younger workers were also less likely to recover employment in August. Finally, for those who were employed in both December 2019 and August 2020, we examine the changes in employment arrangements. We find a much greater frequency of transitions from wage employment to self-employment, more than that in the seasonally comparable period last year (Dec 2018 to Aug 2019). Our results call for urgent additional fiscal measures to counteract these effects.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Unemployment, Pandemic, Job Creation, and Consumerism
Political Geography:
India

14. A Short Note on Debt-Neutral Fiscal Policy

Author:
Zico Dasgupta
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
One of the central concerns against increasing expenditures in the recent period has been the possibility of an adverse impact on debt-GDP ratio. Once stability of debt-ratio is regarded as a policy-objective, the aggregate expenditure that is consistent with the stability condition gets determined by the given level of output growth rate and revenue receipts. Instead of perceiving expenditures to be determined by the debt-stability condition, this short note attempts to lay bare the conditions under which the debt-stability condition is restored despite increasing the growth rate of non-capital primary expenditure to a targeted level. The targeted level of growth rate of non-capital expenditures can be perceived to be one which compensates for the income loss of labour during the pandemic. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the possibility of increasing such expenditures is explored not by reducing capital expenditures, but rather by increasing the latter. Using the multiplier value of capital expenditures estimated by the RBI, it is argued that the debt-ratio would remain unchanged despite increasing the growth rate of non capital primary expenditure if the capital expenditures growth rate is allowed to increase in a specific proportion.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Political Economy, Labor Issues, GDP, Employment, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
India

15. Technical & Vocational Education and Training in India: Lacking Vision, Strategy and Coherence

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper briefly examines the performance of each of the five pillars of India’s TVET ecosystem. It also discusses the poor design and implementation of a national vocational qualification framework. It goes to discuss the latest development in the field of education: the National Education Policy 2020 and its view on TVET, and finds it seriously wanting. The paper argues that if India does not want its tertiary education system to be overwhelmed by the massification of school education that occurred since early noughties, it must divert increasing numbers of secondary graduates to vocational education and training. Together with a rising number of jobs in the non-agricultural sector, to which India’s youth aspire to, strengthening vocational education offers the prospect of India potentially realizing its demographic dividend, in the same way that many East Asian countries. If India’s TVET system continues to lack vision, strategy and coherence to underpin the country’s aspiration to become a high human development country, we risk frittering away our dividend.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Labor Issues, Employment, Training, and Vocational Training
Political Geography:
India

16. Explaining COVID-19 Lockdown, Employment and Migration in India: Challenges and Prospects

Author:
Purna Chandra Parida and Yogesh Suri
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper makes an attempt to do an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on employment and migration in India. The analysis is based on up-to-date facts and figures available in the public domain on economic growth, employment and migration. Using the employment elasticity approach, the study estimates employment loss during 2020-21 owing to the negative impact of COVID-19 on economic activities. The results of the study suggest that the country may witness job loss with the tune of 18.5  18.8 million in the current fiscal year. This in turn would shoot up the unemployment rate from 5.8% in 2018-19 to 8.9% in 2020-21, warranting a coordinated and focused approach from both the Central and State governments to uplift the confidence of the people and bring back the lost jobs, particularly the migrant workers. The study also emphasises on Central government’s urgent attention and action plan for uplifting the rural economy in order to revive India’s economy in the short run.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
India

17. Covid-19 Crisis: An Indictment of India’s Informal Economy

Author:
Jenny Sulfath and Balu Sunilraj
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper attempts to look at the ways informality is conceptualized in India and argues that the problems with the laws pertaining to informal labour are not simply an implementation issue, but the design of the labour laws itself exclude informal labour. While reviewing the history of labour laws in India and the social history of labour participation, the paper also examines the current change in the political approach to labour by changing the labour laws in the pretext of the pandemic. Focussing on the changes made in labour laws in Madhya Pradesh the paper argues that these changes would further informalise the workers intensifying the crisis.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

18. Down and Out? The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in labour markets across the world including loss of employment and decline in incomes. Using panel data from India, we investigate the differential impact of the shock on labour market outcomes for male and female workers. We find that, conditional on being in the workforce prior to the pandemic, women were seven times more likely to lose work during the nationwide lockdown, and conditional on losing work, eleven times more likely to not return to work subsequently, compared to men. Using logit regressions on a sample stratified by gender, we find that daily wage and young workers, whether men or women, were more likely to face job loss. Education shielded male workers from job loss, whereas highly educated female workers were more vulnerable to job loss. Marriage had contrasting effects for men and women, with married women less likely to return to work and married men more likely to return to work. Religion and gender intersect to exacerbate the disproportionate impact, with Muslim women more likely to not return to work, unlike Muslim men where we find religion having no significant impact. Finally, for those workers who did return to work, we find that a large share of men in the workforce moved to self-employment or daily wage work, in agriculture, trade or construction. For women, on the other hand, there is limited movement into alternate employment arrangements or industries. This suggests that typical ‘fallback’ options for employment do not exist for women. During such a shock, women are forced to exit the workforce whereas men negotiate across industries and employment arrangements.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
India

19. Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? Labour Market Transitions in India

Author:
Rahul Menon and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using two rounds of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) covering the periods 2017-18 and 2018-19, we construct a panel of urban Indian individuals aged 15 to 65, and analyse the dynamics of their participation – or non-participation – in the labour force. We construct transition probabilities to study the movement of individuals through three distinct statuses – employment, unemployment and non-participation – at the aggregate level and for different demographic groups. We find evidence of considerable movements from the labour force to non-participation; there exists a significant discouraged worker effect as well as a pronounced movement from employment outside the labour force, specifically for women. A majority of those unemployed in the beginning of the year remain so at the end of the year, indicating the presence of long-term unemployment. The reduction in unemployment rates from 2017-18 to 2018-19 hides significant weaknesses in Indian urban labour markets. This study represents an original contribution to the field of Indian labour economics, given the paucity of large-scale studies of the dynamics of Indian labour.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Market, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

20. Does Change in Intellectual Property Rights Induce Demand for Skilled Workers? Evidence from India

Author:
Pavel Chakraborthy and Prachi Gupta
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
Do incentives to innovate create demand for skilled workers more than proportionately? We study the question using the implementation of the Patent (Amendment) Act in India in 2002 to comply with the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. We find, first, stronger intellectual property protection has a sharper impact on demand for skilled workers for high patentable industries. Demand for skilled workers increased by 0.5%–2.9% for industries that are more patentable. The average compensation for skilled workers went up by 10% in high patentable industries but decreased for unskilled workers by about 2%. Second, the increase in wage inequality can partly be attributed to the increase in wages rather than incentives. Third, the increase in demand for skilled workers is due to both the increase in intensive margin (or price) and extensive margin (number). Fourth, the aggregate effect is completely driven by industries producing intermediate goods and big plants. Finally, the reforms led to a significant reallocation of resources between industries. The high patentable industries invested more in technology adoption, started to produce more product varieties at higher quality, and filed for more product patent claims. Broadly, we demonstrate that stronger intellectual property protection leads to higher wage inequality between industries.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Intellectual Property/Copyright, and Skilled Labor
Political Geography:
India and Asia

21. What Matters for Urban Women’s Work?

Author:
Shamindra Nath Roy and Partha Mukhopadhyay
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
India is one of the lowest globally in terms of female labour force participation (FLFP), ranking only better than Pakistan in South Asia. While the decline in FLFP in rural areas is starkly visible, the urban FLFP has been consistently low since the 1980s despite higher economic growth and increasing level of education among females. The economic cost of such low FLFP (16.8%) is huge and if, for instance, it could be raised to the level of FLFP in China (61.5%), it has the potential to raise India’s GDP up to 27%. This paper attempts to investigate the structural deficiencies behind this consistently low urban FLFP through a variety of perspectives, ranging from measuring the complexity of women’s work to the implications of caste, location and family structure. It finds factors like presence of female-friendly industries, provision of regular salaried jobs and policies that cater to women’s needs to work near home like availability of part-time work, can improve the situation, though prejudices arising from patriarchy require to be addressed to make these measures truly transformative and not palliative.
Topic:
Education, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Inequality, and Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

22. Pandemic, informality, and vulnerability: Impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in India

Author:
Surbhi Kesar, Rosa Abraham, Rahul Lahoti, Paaritosh Nath, and Amit Basole
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
We analyze findings from a large-scale survey of around 5000 respondents across 12 states of India to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic containment measures (lockdown) on employment, livelihoods, food security and access to relief measures. We find a massive increase in unemployment, an equally dramatic fall in earnings among informal workers, large increases in food insecurity, depletion of savings and patchy coverage of relief measures. Two-thirds of our respondents lost work. The few informal workers who were still employed during the lockdown experienced more than a fifty percent drop in their earnings. Even among regular wage workers, half received either no salary or reduced salary during the lockdown. Almost eighty percent of surveyed households experienced a reduction in their food intake and a similar percentage of urban households did not have enough money to pay next month's rent. We also use a set of logistic regressions to identify how employment loss and food intake varies with individual and householdlevel characteristics. We find that migrants and urban Muslims are significantly worse off with respect to employment and food security. Among employment categories, self-employed workers were more food secure. The Public Distribution System (PDS) system was seen to have the widest reach among social security measures. However, even under PDS, 16 percent of vulnerable urban households did not have access to government rations. Further, half of the respondents reported not receiving any cash transfers (state or central). We conclude that much more is needed in the way of direct fiscal support that has been announced thus far by state and central governments in India.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Unemployment, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
India

23. Gender and Work Patterns in Indian Cities: A Socio-Spatial Analysis

Author:
Vamsi Vakulabharanam and Sripad Motiram
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Using an original household survey conducted in Hyderabad and Mumbai that identifies intracity spatial coordinates of residents, we present a socio-spatial analysis of gender and paid work. We show that the ease of movement through the city, allocation of care work related considerations and educational attainment are all crucial to understanding the labor force participation patterns of urban women. A gender lens identifies key facets of access and mobility characterizing urbanization in developing countries. Spatial heterogeneity of residence has very different outcomes for the labor force participation of women and men.
Topic:
Development, Labor Issues, Women, Work Culture, Cities, and Gender
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

24. Building a Social Security Architecture for Informal Workers in India, Finally!

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Social protection and social security have very limited coverage in India. This reality has not changed since independence, one of greatest failures of the development strategy India adopted in the early fifties. The labour force is predominantly unorganized. As much as 91 per cent of the labour force are in informal employment, i.e. without any social insurance we estimated from the NSO’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18) (Mehrotra and Parida, 2019). This is barely down 2 percentage points from 93% in 2011-12 (NSO’s 68th Round). In fact, regardless of the growth rate of GDP, this high share of informality in the workforce had not changed until 2012, and when it fell recently, it did so by merely 2 points. The rest 9 per cent of the workforce has varying levels of social security in the form of provident fund, paid leave, medical insurance and other benefits.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Social Policy, Social Security, Welfare, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

25. Did Employment Rise or Fall in India between 2011 and 2017? Estimating Absolute Changes in the Workforce

Author:
Amit Basole and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The recently released data from the 2017-2018 Periodic Labour Force Survey have created a controversy regarding the quantity of employment generated in the past few years in India. Estimates ranging from an absolute increase of 23 million to an absolute decline of 15.5 million have been published. In this paper we show that some of the variation in estimates can be explained by the way in which populations are projected based on Census 2011 data. We estimate the change in employment using the cohort-component method of population projection. We show that for men total employment rose but the increase fell far short of the increase in working age population. For women, employment fell. The decline is concentrated among women engaged in part-time or occasional work in agriculture and construction.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

26. Income Distribution and Effective Demand in the Indian Economy

Author:
Zico Dasgupta
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Does there exist a trade-off between labour’s income share and output growth rate? Or does a reduction in wage share in itself reduces the output growth rate? These questions have returned to the centre stage in the midst of India’s present crisis as the government sought the dilution and suspension of labour laws as a counter-cyclical policy instrument. In the absence of any other stimulus or countervailing factors, the impact of such a policy would hinge on the relationship between income distribution and effective demand. This paper attempts to lay bare this relationship for the Indian economy through an empirical analysis of India’s macro data and a theoretical model on the basis of regression results.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Demand
Political Geography:
India

27. Economic Transition, Dualism, and Informality in India: Nature and Patterns of Household-level Transitions

Author:
Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
We examine the Indian economy during a peak period of high growth between 2005-2012 to analyze nature and patterns of household-level transitions across the different sectors of the economy and to relate these transitions to the broader process of structural change. We use a pan-India household-level panel data to categorize households according to their primary income sources into seven sectors characterized by varying degrees of formality/informality and various production structures and labour processes. We find that even this this relatively brief period, there has been a very large volume of transitions of households across these sectors. However, despite such volumes of transitions, the overall economic structure, and its segmentations, has continued to be reproduced, along with a regeneration of ‘traditional’ informal spaces that were often expected to dissolve over time with high economic growth. To ascertain the nature of these transitions – ‘favorable’ or ‘unfavorable’ – in terms of economic well-being of households, we employ a counterfactual analysis. We find that a majority of the transitions in the economy during the period of analysis have been ‘unfavourable’ in nature, with large proportion of households transitioning to sectors that are not ‘optimal’ locations for them, given their socio-economic characteristics. Further, using a multinomial logit regression framework, we find that the likelihood and nature of these transitions significantly vary with household characteristics, some of which, like social caste, are structurally given and cannot be optimally chosen by households. This dynamic process of reproducing a rather stagnant structure, along with substantial ‘unfavourable’ transitions towards ‘traditional’ informal economic spaces that are continuously reshuffled and reconstituted, provide insights into the complexity of India’s development trajectory that is often glossed over in the literature.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
India

28. Mechanisms of Surplus Appropriation in the Informal Sector: A Case Study of Tribal Migrants in Ahmedabad’s Construction Industry

Author:
Rahul De
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper is based on fieldwork I had undertaken regarding tribal migrant workers in the construction sector, in Ahmedabad in May-July 2018, coordinated by Aajevika Bureau(AB). I had undertaken this fieldwork to assess the work of AB and advise them about strategies to collectivize migrant labour groups. While interacting with a particular social group (Bhil tribals from South West Rajasthan) who work in the construction sector, I struggled to capture the specificity of their experience through the concept of informal labour. This paper is an attempt to characterize the specificity of their social experience, while also, reframing the concept of informal labour. I use the concept of labour process (Michael Burawoy: Manufacturing Consent) to argue that there is not a binary or one-dimensional power relationship between informal labour and owner/state/capital, but instead, the process of surplus appropriation occurs at multiple nodes through different agents. In this paper, I have identified multiple modes of surplus extraction which are embedded as institutions or social norms in the labour process. Further, I argue that there is a close link between the status of tribal workers as marginalized within society, and their status as displaced and marginalized in their living areas and workplace. This difference translates into identity based discrimination faced in the city, as well as, structural exclusion from the governance apparatus faced as migrants. Therefore, tribal migrant workers do not earn enough to subsist and are highly dependent on early child birth, non-remunerated services of their family and the social security net provided by their village community. This paper concludes that primitive accumulation, fragmenting land ownership and indebtedness creates a supply of tribal migrants, who have no other recourse to employment and are forced to work in the deplorable conditions found in the construction sector. Tribal migrant workers in the informal sector are an important population to target for social policies, because they are more vulnerable than other social identities. This paper hopes to contribute to the framing of interventions and policies that civil society organizations and state authorities can implement to improve the terms of employment and working conditions of informal labour.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Migrant Workers
Political Geography:
India

29. Measuring the Spatial Misallocation of Labor: The Returns to India-Gulf Guest Work in a Natural Experiment

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
‘Guest workers’ earn higher wages overseas on temporary low-skill employment visas. This wage gap can be used to measure gaps in the productivity of workers due to where they are, not who they are. This paper estimates the effects of guest work on Indian applicants to a construction job in the United Arab Emirates, where an economic crisis allocated guest work opportunities as-good-as-randomly among several thousand families. Guest work raised the return to poor families' labor by a factor of four, with little evidence of systematic fraud.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Migrant Workers, and Guest Workers
Political Geography:
India and Asia

30. Labor Laws and Manufacturing Performance in India: How Priors Trump Evidence and Progress Gets Stalled

Author:
Servaas Storm
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Strong labor protections for ordinary workers are often portrayed as a ‘luxury developing countries cannot afford’. No study has been more influential in propagating this perversity trope in the context of the Indian economy than the QJE article of Besley and Burgess (2004). Their article provides econometric evidence that pro-worker regulation resulted in lower output, employment, investment and productivity in India’s registered manufacturing sector. This paper reviews existing critiques of Besley and Burgess (2004), which highlight conceptual and measurement errors and uncover econometric weaknesses. The paper takes a step beyond these: it reports a failure to replicate Besley and Burgess’ findings and demonstrate the nonrobustness of their results. My deconstruction is not only about the econometrics, however. I show that Besley and Burgess’ findings are not just inconsistent with their theoretical priors, but also internally contradictory and empirically implausible, taxing any person’s capacity for belief. The paper, written by two ‘useful economists’, exhibits a gratuitous empiricism in which priors trump evidence. On all counts, it fails the test of being useful to the purpose of ‘evidence-based’ public policy advice.mp Evidence and Progress Gets Stalled
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, and Labor Policies
Political Geography:
India and Asia

31. Fiscal Transfers and Inflation: Evidence from India

Author:
Girish Bahal and Anand Shrivastava
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Controlling for monetary policy, government transfers are potentially inflationary. This, however, may not be true when the economy is demandconstrained. Using a panel data of 17 Indian states over 30 years, we show that government transfers via welfare programs do not lead to inflation. For identification, we use a narrative shock series of transfer spending that is based on the introduction of new welfare programs. We then look at a specific program, NREGA, which has been shown to increase rural wages, and show that its implementation did not increase inflation.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Labor Issues, Monetary Policy, Employment, Inflation, and Demand
Political Geography:
India

32. The Size Structure of India’s Enterprises: Not Just the Middle is Missing

Author:
Tuhinsubhra Giri and Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Most international development economics and industrial organization literature emphasises the importance of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) as important to output, but especially to employment generation. Countries have different definitions for SMEs. In India the MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) are defined in terms of investment in plant and machinery or equipment. The MSME Ministry (Annual Report, Government of India 2017–18) stated that the sector accounts for 45% of the manufacturing output and 40% of the total exports of the country; also that MSMEs accounted for 30.74% of GDP in 2014– 15. Not surprising, MSMEs are considered a driving force of the economy.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Manufacturing, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
India

33. India’s Employment Crisis: Rising Education Levels and Falling Non-agricultural Job Growth

Author:
Jajati Parida and Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Falling total employment is an unprecedented trend seen from 2011-12 to 2017-18. Due to a decline of employment in agriculture and manufacturing and slow growth of construction jobs, the process of structural transformation, which had gained momentum post-2004-5, has stalled since 2012. Mounting educated youth unemployment, and lack of quality non-farm jobs have resulted in an increase of the disheartened labour force. Though the share of regular and formal employment increased marginally due to growth of formal jobs in the private sectors, the share of informal jobs within government/public sector increased. A dominant share of jobs is still generated by micro and small units of the unorganized sectors without any formal or written job contract. In both government and private sectors the number of contract jobs (with less than a year’s contract) is on the rise post 2011-12. Not surprisingly, real wages have not increased in either rural or urban areas.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and Job Creation
Political Geography:
India

34. Inequalities in the Gendered Labour Market: What can be Done?

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Globally, research has shown that, there is a high correlation between the level of per capita income and the rate of female labour force participation. At the same time the agency and autonomy of women in a country improve with the level of female labour force participation. Sen (2000) has argued that the autonomy and agency of women in a society and their empowerment is enabled by four conditions in their lives. First the higher the education level of women, the more empowered they are likely to feel. Second, if they are working outside the home, they are likely to feel a sense of autonomy and empowerment. Third, they should also have an independent source of income from that of the significant other in their household. Finally, their empowerment can be usually enhanced if they own assets and have access to them. One can see from this analysis that the first three requirements for women’s’ empowerment are related to each other and to some extent co-dependent. We will keep these considerations in mind as we analyse labour markets and how women engaged with them in different parts of the world.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Education, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, and Inequality
Political Geography:
India

35. How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?: A comparison of NSS, Labour Bureau and CMIE Estimates

Author:
Anand Shrivastava and Rosa Abraham
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
With the lack of official government data on unemployment and other labour market indicators, the most viable and recent source have been the regular household surveys conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). Given the differences in methods in data collection, it becomes exceedingly important to establish some comparability between the government and the CMIE datasets. This paper attempts to do that using two methods. First we fit a model of employment status on the CMIE data and see how well it predicts outcomes in the older Labour Bureau 2015-16 and NSS 2011-12 data. Then we compare state-level estimates of broad labour market indicators from CMIE 2016 and Labour Bureau 2015-16 datasets. The broad results are that despite differences in methodologies, the estimates for men are quite comparable between the surveys, while measures of women’s participation in the labour force seem particularly sensitive to the way questions are asked in surveys.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Work Culture, Labor Policies, and Participation
Political Geography:
India

36. Towards higher female work participation in India: what can be done?

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra and Sharmistha Sinha
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
A continuous and sharp decline in the already depressed female labour force participation rate in India post 2005, particularly in the face of its rapid economic growth raises questions about the inclusiveness of the growth process. The paper recommends a set of policies based on the analysis of the nature and trends of female work participation and a brief analysis of the underlying reasons behind such trends. Women are moving out of the low productivity agricultural sector, which necessitates an increase in employment opportunities in the nonagricultural sector, particularly in rural and in semi-urban locations. Improving skills for employability, especially in manufacturing clusters (which is where the jobs are) located close to young girls’ rural homes, would help the females to join the labour force if non-agricultural jobs are growing. To release women from unpaid work in the household to join the paid labour force, it is essential to improve child care facilities and other basic service facilities, which again calls for raising the share of public expenditure in some sectors and specific facilities. For instance, increasing single working women’s housing, making public transport safer, and modifying public programmes to cater to women’s needs can pave the way for more women to engage and remain in the labour force, become active participants in the growth process, and thus achieve greater economic empowerment.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, and Employment
Political Geography:
India

37. The Evolving Discourse on Job Quality- From Normative Frameworks to Measurement Indicators: The Indian Example

Author:
Divya Prakash and Sabina Dewan
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Indians are optimistic. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 Global Attitudes Survey, three out of four Indians believe that, “when children today in India grow up, they will be better off financially than their parents” (Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 2017). Families hinge their hopes on the ability of the next generation to work hard, earn a living, and be a source of financial support. For years now, the nation has done the same, pinning its economic ambitions to a demographic advantage, or youth bulge, that is set to continue only for the next two decades. Unless there are pathways to productive and high-quality employment, the nation’s youth will not be able to deliver on these expectations. How has India’s economy fared on job creation over the past decade? The country had just under 466 million people in the labour force1 in 2015, with a participation rate of 50.3 percent (Labour Bureau, 2015/16). An analysis of Labour Bureau data over a period of four years from 2012 to 2015 shows that on average, 4.75 million people were added to the labour force per year. According to the Labour Bureau’s Employment-Unemployment survey, between 2012 to 2015, the economy generated a total of 9 million jobs, based on Usual Principal Status -- the activity that an individual is engaged in for a major part of the reference year (Labour Bureau, 2011/12 to 2015/16).
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Work Culture, and Job Creation
Political Geography:
India

38. The Only Answer is to Mobilise the Workers. An Interview with K. Hemalata, President of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
In the face of increasing neoliberal policies, the working-class movement in India has seen several major general strikes. Our eighteenth dossier – an interview with K Hemalata, President of the Centre of India Trade Unions – discusses the challenges and struggles facing the Indian working class and how they are able to organise workers who initially were apprehensive and afraid to join working class movement.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Class, Unions, and Mobilization
Political Geography:
India and Asia