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exclusion of migrant workers and other informal workers from existing schemes due to the lack of their registration and outdated eligibility lists.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.