The joint study team has also involved in its investigations other Central Ministries like Rural Development, Textiles, Construction Industry, Small Scale and Medium Enterprises, etc. This means the scope and coverage of the ongoing study will be much wider than the one undertaken by the Labour Bureau of the Labour Ministry last year covering only the October-December 2008 period.

The 2008 survey had covered a sample of 2581 units pertaining to Mines, Textiles, Metals, Gems and Jewellery; Automobiles, Transport and IT/BPO. These sectors were taken into account because they contributed more than 65 per cent of the GDP in 2007-08. The survey found that employment in these sectors had gone down from 16.2 million during September 2008 to 15.7 million during December 2008, resulting in job loss of about half a million people.

The Labour Bureau survey, however, was very limited in its scope and coverage and therefore could not measure the nationwide impact of financial crisis and slowdown, since organised sector employs only 7 per cent of the 400 million workforce of the country. The Arjun Sengupta Commission for Unorganised Sector Enterprises has brought out the reality of the unorganised sector workforce when it said that 78 per cent of India (836 million working people) lived on only between Rs 9 and Rs 20 a day. Moreover, the net growth of employed from 1999-2000 to 2004-05 has been largely informal, increasing vulnerability of the unorganised sector.

It has to be seen whether the joint study has taken into account this critical factor because this sector has suffered the most due to unemployment, inefficient implementation of welfare schemes like NREGA, etc. during this financial crisis phase.

This joint study assumes importance also in the background of the deliberations at the 98th Session of the International Labour Organisation held in Geneva. The ILO Director General's Report to the Session warned that “there is a real danger that, once some growth returns, victory will be declared prematurely, turning a blind eye to the lingering job crisis.”

The Report also warns that the global synchronised character of this crisis means that no country can hope to export its way out of the crisis. “Measures to rekindle growth must start at home through fiscal and monetary policies to arrest falling demand,” the Report said, adding, “only through the combined effect of domestic policies will trade resume its role as a force of growth.”

It has been rightly said that developing countries have been particularly hit by job losses in formal, mostly export-oriented industries. True to our experience in India, the Report says “these job losses will tend to further inflate the ranks of informal workers, including in agriculture, thereby raising the competition among low income occupations.”

India's policy-makers take pride in the fact that over 50 per cent of the country's population is below 25 years of age and their creative energy is its “greatest strategic resource”. The challenge, they say, is to invest in their education, employability and employment. ILO Director General Report too takes into account the growing number of labour force worldwide. It says that economically active population of 3.3 billion is growing by some 45 million new entrants every year. Moreover, as in India, in other countries too “tens of millions of young people are about to leave schools and enter a depressed labour market. In the absence of jobs, this can have deeper social consequences.”

The Report warns that prolonged joblessness creates many more social problems. From a job crisis it can lead to “social recession”, it says. For instance, persons lose their skills if they are out of job for a longer period. Unemployment increases stress, illness and loss of self-esteem, leading to personal distress. “Rising unemployment is associated with higher suicides.” Moreover, the longer people who want to work are out of employment, the heavier the strain and lower the probability of moving back into employment. “Skilled formal sector workers are moving into informal makeshift activities and facing more constrained working conditions,” the Report observes.

In this context, some facts given by the Arjun Sengupta Commission about public sector employment should raise serious questions. The Commission has said that the public sector added 2.87 million jobs between 1983 and 1993 but shed 1.46 million between 1993 and 2006. This was the aftermath of liberalisation, privatisation and global (LPG) market competition. In this entire period the private sector contributed only 1,22,000 jobs. Where did the over 12 lakh public sector employees go? Obviously, this does not bother the LPG policy-makers. The world labour body, however, feels, this should bother all the three stake-holders and not only the workers if stability and industrial peace is to be maintained and growth assured.

One more fact: Recessions affect women and men differently, says the ILO Report. Particularly in lower income households, the loss of women's income may have greater long-term negative implications than a similar loss in men's income. With fiscal austerity measures tending to affect the quality and availability of public services, families, and especially women and girls, shoulder greater care responsibility.

What is the fate of hard-won workers rights in a situation of financial crisis as of today? The Report says that “fundamental rights at work are shaken when redundancies have a discriminatory impact affecting the most vulnerable first - migrant workers, women and young. Freely negotiated collective agreements are no longer respected, and workers have to concede hard-won wage levels and benefits in order to retain any credible prospects of future employment and income.” The risk of clandestine labour and illegal child labour cheap alternatives is growing in many countries.

Do we not see this happening in the country with covered Government sanction as in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) with the threat of this malady spreading all around. In India, we see the spectacle of politician-bureaucrats seeking to create high-wage 'ivory tower' structure at the upper level in administration as well as in public sector on the plea of efficiency. In fact, it facilitates speeding up of LPG and not growth with employment. (IPA Service)