During the last 16 months under the shadow of COVID-19, the nature of work has undergone a sea change. When the lockdown of the country was announced on March 24, 2020, the economy came to a grinding halt and business and industry closed. At that time, for 72 per cent of the households had no regular wage or salaried income, 87.1 per cent in the rural areas and 56.9 per cent in the urban areas, according to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey of 2019-20. Around 80 per cent of India’s labour force was employed in the informal sector at that time. Though we don’t have the latest data, but pandemic might have considerably increased their percentage, because informality in the economy has been increasing, which is reflected in the rise of gig and platform workers. Such workers are easily hired and fired, and in most of the cases even not recognised as workers or employees, a fact that is even mentioned in the Economic Survey 2020-21. The Survey said that Social Security Code 2020 will take care of such workers. It should be noted that this code is yet to be implemented, so the claim remains merely a claim.

From the beginning of the general lockdown the informal workers lost all sources of income for over two months of total lockdown until May 31, 2020. Whatever little they had they consumed during this period. Unlocking started slowly with strict containment measures, were relaxed with passage of time, but the job market is yet to recover. The first wave of COVID-19 was supposed to be over by mid-September, but job market remained volatile. Employment scenario have been worsening months after months since January 2021 which underwent the vagaries of the second wave during February to May 2021. Labour market showed only a little improvement thereafter, but the third wave of the pandemic is predicted to strike by the end of August to be peaked in October 2021.

About half of the informal workers were working in the agriculture sector and another half in non-agriculture sector. Of the non-agricultural informal sector workers, about half live in the rural areas. Thus we see about 60 per cent of the informal workers live in rural areas while only 20 per cent live in urban areas. Thus the impact of COVID-19 is being felt more in the rural areas that in the urban areas. We do have MGNRGA schemes for the stressed informal labour in the rural areas, but it is yet to provide full coverage and the average wage was only Rs 202 per day for 100 days in a year. However, we don’t have any such scheme for distressed jobless informal worker in urban areas leaving them as good as destitute.

The situation has worsened even in the formal sector which was employing 20 per cent of the labour force of the country – 8 per cent in industrial sector and 12 per cent in service services. Only about 6 per cent were in public services. Barring essential services all the business and industries in the formal sector had also been closed and many of the workers lost their jobs, many of them are yet not able to regain them. Workers in our informal sector thus have grown considerably, both in the rural and urban areas. Giving social security coverage will thus need ever more budgetary support, and welfare programmes.

The government narrative has falsely been claiming that situation of informal workers have been improving during the pandemic. In support of their claim they say that formalization of the informal workers has shown up in corporate results. However, we must not forget that corporate sector is only a cross section of the economy which is in the organized sector and has nothing to do with the informal sector’s informal workers. Big companies have earned huge profit during the pandemic and the benefit of the economic package too. Entities in the unorganized sectors are struggling for their own survival, and their workforce have been suffering out of jobs, and on lower wages if in jobs. Disruption in the informal sector is still weighing on demand and supply distorting the whole job market.

Several researchers have pointed out if urban informal workers without social security lose jobs, many move back to their rural homes. However, rural wages today has been reported 2.5 times lower than the urban wages. We can just imagine what is the condition of migrant workers who have returned to their home in the last one hand half years of pandemic. Government thus needs to keep the informal sector at the core of the economic policies of the country. In the meantime, a special package should be given to the unorganised workers in terrible crisis that has struck them. The assistance they are getting in terms of food articles or cash by the centre and the state governments are insufficient to meet their daily expenses. Revival packages for MSMEs also need to be fine-tuned and made finance more accessible. Wages due to informal workers must also be disbursed to them as soon as possible, if not by their private or semi-government employers, by the government. Database for informal workers is yet not ready, and therefore, social security schemes cannot provide full coverage. Modi government must expedite it to save informal workers. (IPA Service)