What a Workforce Data could do for Self Reliance

Context: Union and state governments must realize that offering the workforce due respect and security is a precondition to achieving self-reliant and sustainable economic system.

Challenges in Effective Implementation of Workers Centric Policies

• Limited capacity of state governments to ensure food for non-ration card holders (in absence of credible data).
• Structural problems: Employers consider workers as cost of production rather than human capital or asset.
• PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry:  60% of businesses consider payment of wages as a major challenge, post-lockdown and about half of them are planning layoffs. 
• Risk of fragmentation and geographical isolation of informal workforce.

Focus on Workers Database

• National Migrant Information System: to allow workers to be tracked so that their health can be checked, and skills matched with job vacancies.
• State initiated credible database of migrant workers (by utilising existing channels of providing benefits to them).
• Migrant database should include skill sets and past experience, apart from previous wage and medical history. 
• Matching workers database (supply side of human capital): with the estimated demand of workers in various industries across India for ensuring adequate wages, safety, skill-development, and universal social safety coverage. 
• Technology infusion through Digital India vision: like cloud storage and market exchange platforms for operationalization of database and remote sensing for monitoring the adherence to the parameters for worker welfare.

Way Forward

• Structural problems that plague our human capital can be solve by looking at labour as an ‘asset’ or ‘human capital’ and not through a lens of ‘cost of production’.