Modi government has clearly failed in creating decent jobs since it took over the rein in 2014. During the election campaign the prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has first promised to create one crore jobs a year, and then work with dignity for all, which as per requirement interpreted as two crores jobs. However, he ditched the workforce, and even blocked the way for framing the national employment policy (NEP) proposed in 2013 by Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the highest tripartite body for labour policy in the country. ILC sessions were even not held since 2015, and now the government has recently informed the Parliament of India that no work is being done on NEP. When unemployment grew to the highest in 45 years in the beginning of 2018 to 6.2 per cent, the ministers told the country that even “selling pakoda” was a job, which betrayed their real callous attitude towards the workforce never intending regular salaried decent job creation with complete social security coverage.

PM Modi put the country under lockdown on March 24, 2020 after the pandemic struck the country. The hollowness of “selling pakoda” on the streets as a job was exposed since there was lockdown. The great distress for millions of migrant workers made headlines across the world since hundreds simply perished while returning home. Modi government should have taken lesson that there was no alternate to regular salaried decent jobs with complete social security coverage, but it took different route of “labour reforms” that the government labelled the biggest much awaited reform in independent India. Neither ILC not the Central Trade Unions were consulted and the four labour codes subsuming 29 labour laws were got passed in the Parliament of India, one in 2019, and the three in 2020, when the entire workforce was struggling for their own survival. Immorality of the situation never struck the Modi government, and now the Centre is bent upon implementing them soon.

Let it be so. The workforce in India is still be reeling under the bad quality of jobs available to them, and there are only 27 per cent of jobs that are able to pull out the workforce from extreme, moderate, or near poor conditions. On the other hand, the Modi government has been batting for gig and platform jobs where there is almost no social security coverage, and the data shows that the labour market conditions have been highly volatile. Millions of workers get job a month, and loses them in the next. Informality exceeds 90 per cent in the job market, while only 24 per cent of workers are getting at least one social security coverage.

“The Workforce We Need: Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific” released recently by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has even made comparison of India’s performance in working poverty with neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Maldives. India is worst in all forms of working poverties, barring Pakistan’s near poverty condition which is 41 per cent in comparison to 35 per cent of India.

United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on healthy, protected and productive workforce depend on Asia and the Pacific’s success, since people of working age make up two thirds of the region’s population and more than half of the global labour force. India’s failure in this regard would pull the world down since the country is set to become the largest populated country by 2023, with largest number of working poor.

“Our workforce generates the tax revenues needed to pay for essential public goods and services and ensure the well-being of dependent family members. Yet the working-age population of Asia and the Pacific is under pressure, denied the decent work opportunities it needs to fulfil its potential,” the ESCAP report emphasized.

What is then decent work that the ESCAP, ILO and other UN bodies and international organisations are batting for? Decent work entails equality of opportunity and treatment at work, dignity and safety in the workplace, a fair income and the freedom for workers to organize and participate in decisions related to their work and lives. It provides workers with access to social protection and health care, thereby ensuring that negative coping strategies, such as reducing food intake and selling productive assets, are avoided in the event of job loss or sickness. The ESCAP report further says that decent work is necessary to ensure an adequate standard of living, reduce poverty and inequality, protect people from life cycle contingencies and promote inclusive growth. It is through well-functioning labour markets that the benefits of economic growth can spread to the whole population.

With India at the lowest step in South Asia in working poverty and the largest and fastest growing economy that grew 13.5 per cent in the last quarter has given ample proof that the economic policies and legal provisions are working against the workforce, and decent job creation is nobody’s concern. It brings down the entire Asia and Pacific region, where half of the workforce is poor or teetering on the brink of poverty. With more than half the region’s population excluded from any social protection, the ESCAP report says, the workforce is highly vulnerable to systemic shocks such as pandemics or economic downturns. Vulnerabilities undermine their productivity which has fallen below the global average, and sustainable livelihoods remain out of reach for many, particularly women and young people, especially in the rural areas and urban slums.

The lack of social protection coverage with high labour-market informality means illness and unemployment, pregnancy and old age, disability and injury, which continue to push workers into poverty. Even before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, more than half of all people in the region had survived without cash income at some point during the preceding 12 months, more than a quarter without enough food and a third without necessary medical treatment. Climate change, population ageing, and digitalisation are such other megatrends, apart from the slow economic and labour market recovery, price rise and inflation, could further exacerbate the vulnerabilities of workers, ESCAP has warned. Generating new jobs and increasing the share of decent jobs therefore must be priority.