NEW DELHI: Not only has India witnessed jobless growth during the UPA 's tenure, it has also seen millions pushed to become casual labour with little social security, the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), a think-tank of the Planning Commission, has said in a recently published research paper, ‘Joblessness and Informalization: Challenges to Inclusive Growth in India’.

The report by the government body comes as a scathing comment on the character of economic growth under the UPA. The authors said despite clocking phenomenal growth which has made India the world’s fourth biggest economy , “employment in total and in non-agricultural sectors has not been growing. This jobless growth in recent years has been accompanied by growth in casualization and informalization”.

The report noted that 15 million workers shifted out of agriculture and into the manufacturing and services sector during 2005-10, leading to agriculture’s share in total employment falling from 57% to 53%. In the same period, the construction sector added 18 million people as workers as the government made huge investments in infrastructure.

Most of those moving out of agriculture (during a period in which farm productivity was on the decline) ended up being casual labour in the construction industry with little or no social security, the study said.

“Out of 44 million total employment in construction by 2010, 42 million (informal labour) hardly have any kind of social security benefit attached with it. In other words, 95% of workers in construction sector hardly have any kind of social security coverage,” the study said.

This explains why the report is not gung ho about the shift in employment away from agriculture towards manufacturing and services, a development that economists would normally see as positive and as an indicator of an economy in transition.

The authors from the government think-tank warned that a “daunting and complicated task confronting the policy makers is to address the issue of informal employment within the organized sector. This issue of informalization of employment poses a serious challenge in achieving decent work and thereby achieving more inclusive growth and sustainable development”.

The research paper said in the period 2005-10, the manufacturing sector saw the loss of 5 million jobs. The services sector, which saw a massive growth of jobs during 2000-2005 of 18 million jobs, witnessed only 4 million additional jobs in 2005-2010. This, the report said, was odd considering the growth period is often called that of ‘service-led’ growth.

The study by IAMR has a cautionary word for anyone who may proclaim that farm labour was doing better by coming to the cities as migrants to be part of an emerging India. “Undoubtedly, construction driven by significant expansion of infrastructure investment during the 11th five year plan has helped in absorbing surplus workers from agriculture sector. However, ensuring decent employment for those moving out of agriculture remains a big challenge,” it said.

India’s track record on this front seems to be one of the worst among the developing countries. The study said “what makes India different is that the share of informal workers in the total workforce is well above the other emerging market economies – 93% of all workers compared to 55% in Brazil”.

IAMR calculated that the prevalence of informal or casual labour has been increasing not only in the small and medium scale unorganized sector but also in the kind of labour big manufacturers hire. “While the informal nature of employment is predominant in the unorganized sector of the economy, its prevalence is increasing even within the organized segment as well,” it said. Almost half of the organized sector labour too is of casual nature, the think tank added.

By 2010, 60% of the organized manufacturing employment was in the nature of informal contracts and 80% of the organized non-manufacturing employment was in the nature of informal contract, the study said.

