The Silent Crisis

Context: Covid highlights the vulnerability of migrant workers. Government must recognise the right to social security.

 Migrant crisis amid pandemic:

     

• Recognised by the Supreme Court: On June 29, the Supreme Court finally delivered its judgment on the plight of migrant labour. The judgment was notable for the following two reasons:
  • First, it recognised that there was the large-scale exclusion of migrant workers and other informal workers from existing schemes due to the lack of their registration and outdated eligibility lists.
  • Second, it connected informal workers and migrant workers, both of whom experience exclusion, and mandated that the portal for registration of all such workers should be fully operational before July 31.

• Lack of legal, social security and protection:
  • The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008included neither a National Minimum Social Security Package nor the provision for mandatory registration as recommended by NCEUS.
  • Other than the PDS, the social protection net provided protection to few households, and the benefit of the extended schemes also remained restricted, particularly for migrant workers.
• Additional vulnerabilities:The Azim Premji University’s State of Working India Report, 2021shows the following vulnerabilities - deterioration in the quality of work, indebtedness as a coping strategy, and lower incomes compared to pre-lockdown levels, pushing hundreds of millions of households into poverty.
• Declining and low-quality public expenditure: Estimates show that the Centre’s expenditure on all major social protection programmes declined from 1.96% of GDP in 2008-9 to 1.6% in 2013- 14 and to only 1.28% in 2019-20.
  • More significantly, these were discretionary, ad hoc, one-time expenditures.

 Way Forward:

     

• Provision of a minimum level of guaranteed social security: For all informal workers and their households within a definite time frame. Investment in social protection is not charity or “helicopter money”, as some call it disdainfully. It is an investment in workers’ productivity and inequitable growth.
  • The report of the Advisory Committee of the ILO provides a strong rationale for instituting a universal SPF during economic crises.
  • As a result, all constituents of the ILO adopted Recommendation 202 on social protection floors at the International Labour Conference in 2012.