The safety net she needs

Context – Social security and work security are two sides of same coin and needs a renewed push specially for women.

Current Situation of Women

• 90% women are working in informal sector.
• Multiple disadvantages: As women, as poor, as informal worker and as member of socially disadvantaged caste and communities.

Essential aspects of Social Security

Healthcare and 

• Social Security must include health care, childcare, insurance, pension and housing with basic infrastructure.

• Landmark documents for Indian public health, which may need tweaking in light of Pandemic

1. WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (a gold standard for public health)
2. High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Universal Health Coverage, and later, the National Health Policy, 2017

• Universal Health Care requires Strong Public Health System, Decentralised planning and implementation. Lesson can be learnt from Goa, Sikkim, Kerala which have handled the COVID crisis well.

Childcare

• Childcare as an essential service for all working women of India. As it results in

• Doubling of women income as a result of full day care.
• Women can provide better quality food to their families.
• Older Children, specially girls, can even attend school once they are relieved of childcare responsibilities.

• SEWA model of Childcare cooperative: provide childcare as well livelihood and respect at local level.

Insurance 

• Current Status: PMJAY is a good starting but suffers from exclusion errors due to Information deficit.
• VimoSEWA model (SEWA’s insurance cooperative): providing services through single window, tailoring the services to the best needs of working poor.
• Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has come up with recommendation on increasing the spread of microinsurance in low income populations.

Pension 

• Pension amounts by state and centre needs to be examined together with unions, cooperatives and other collectives of informal workers for its appropriateness.

Way Forward

• Task force including SHG, and their federation, PRI members, NGOs, trade union should be set up to work on these issues.
• Revisit the recommendation of committee comprising SEWA and Ministry of Labour and Employment.

• To plan for universal social security, Finance Ministry can be designated as nodal ministry and other relevant ministries can be brought under a common body.