The economic issues are most vital for us and it is of the highest importance that we should fight our biggest enemies; poverty, unemployment’’, according to ex-Prime Minister Lal Bahadur. Shastri back then spoke about poverty and unemployment being the biggest enemies of the nation.

As we look back today, India is experiencing the highest unemployment in 45 years and is feeding over 80 cr people under the National Food Security Act. The challenges of poverty and unemployment is largely linked to access (geography) and low wages, even as we keep hearing the debates on unemployability and skill-less education system, the core of the problem today seems the inability to allow creation of jobs seamlessly in both organised and unorganised sector.

Ministry of Labour & Employment data says that 93 per cent of the workforce is in the unorganised sector, with little or access to any social security benefits or job security. India also has 18.3 per cent unpaid workers, and 57.3 per cent of total workforce are self-employed.

Even as the jobs in the agriculture sector is shrinking the workforce in unorganized sector is not reducing, the argument of unorganized sector employment eventually moving to organized sector seems unrealistic in today’s time.

Both Union and state governments are slowly acknowledging the fact that organised sector employment is are not growing faster than expected, the slump in the manufacturing and the new age economy is not creating many organised sector jobs. No major legislation or policy is enacted to address the issues of the unorganised sector workforce who have been long deprived of basic benefits like social security, health insurance, housing, financial inclusion etc.

The Covid crisis was an eye opener, it exposed how the unorganized sector workforce is extremely venerable, has serious workplace challenges and extremely low wages that is unmonitored by any authority, also how these 437 million unorganized sector workers who contribute 50 per cent to the GDP continue to be voiceless.

In a tactical move on the eve of Independence Day the Labour Department, Govt of Karnataka announced ID cards and basic social security scheme for unorganized sector workforce across 23 different services that could cover over 6 million people.

Labour Minister Santosh Lad acknowledged that, “a lot more must be done and issuing ID card is just first step to officially count the workforce that has been deprived of employment benefits, and as and when the unorganised sector board is able to generate revenues in form of cess from various departments through strategic policy changes, we can improve the working conditions, provide social security, healthcare and most importantly work towards a financial inclusion framework.”

The new age platform economy is creating more jobs in the unorganized space, with over 15-16 million workers gig economy powered by the digital delivery platforms is fast growing. Due to the very nature of the business gig workers have little access to employment benefits that the organised sector workforce enjoys. Even as states like Karnataka are pushing for a legislation for gig workers, there is a palpable resistance from several digital delivery platforms to work towards creating welfare schemes for the gig workers.

Like many other countries India is rapidly moving towards employment generation and economic growth is the unorganised sector, and to address the workforce & workplace challenges a comprehensive policy & legal framework is needed. Registration in e-Shram, PMSYM and other portals with extensive publicity, issuing cards is becoming another PR exercise, and the workforce in the unorganized sector who have been subjected to various registrations over years feel that these multiple registrations are not making any difference in their lives. So, what is needed is a massive outreach and a robust process to identify, validate, count, connect and to provide benefits, training, welfare, and healthcare schemes on a war footing basis.

Currently the claim of economic growth and job creation is like ‘building faster cars and getting a ticket for speeding on a bad road’, it throws open the fact that we are setting wrong priorities, over regulating, under prepared and are  failing the youth of the country.

State and Union government’s intervention is needed to bring an organised policy to assess the composition and count of the unorganized sector workforce. Higher budgetary allocation for social security, healthcare, financial inclusion, incubation centers and upskilling programs to enhance skills with guaranteed opportunities in domestic or international job market can fix India’s unemployment crisis in the mid-term and long- term.

The author is Member, Karnataka Building & Other Construction Workers Welfare Board