The scope and scale of existing labor schemes are still limited in penetrating the interacting strata of society.
The scope and scale of existing labor schemes are still limited in penetrating the interacting strata of society.
An increase in budget and beneficiaries under a policy does not necessarily reach the most vulnerable, such that rising GDP does not ensure growth. A better policy goes beyond free giveaway and statistical reach, yielding both greater coverage and deeper social penetration. While the Indian economy, when measured in terms of total output per year, has remained strong, the scope and scale of existing labor schemes are still limited in penetrating the inter-stratals of society.
A large section of workers and their families miss out on basic employment standards such as minimum wages, maternity compensation and financial assistance for education. Inadequate coverage for extreme illness, disability and death further limits the reach of plans. Their wide umbrella classification of beneficiaries, cumbersome application process and red tape make schemes restricted in their reach. Thus, vulnerable laborers are either unaware of the benefits or have difficulty obtaining them.
Vulnerability can further be combined with the intersectional or interconnected nature of social classifications resulting in an overlapping and interdependent system of discrimination and disadvantage. A multifactorial intersection is correlated and includes race and gender, race and employment, employment and gender, gender and ability, etc. Developing an interactive policy requires the administration to take into account various social, economic and cultural factors that address the needs and recognitions of the target individual.
BoCW Schemes
On examining the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Education Scholarship Schemes, it was found that Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh offer an average of ₹3,000 to 5,000 as scholarship amount classified under male-female categories. Himachal Pradesh, on the other hand, offers a higher scholarship amount of ₹35,000 for women and ₹25,000 for men. While this is a great scheme in terms of coverage, it also falls short of going beyond the male-female classification.
Delhi offers amounts ranging from ₹6,000 for primary school students to ₹1,20,000 for MBA, but also lacks the said binary gender classification. Learning from Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, there is a need to increase the scholarship amount in other states especially for higher grades. Unfortunately, however, considering the binary classification in such schemes, the multifactorial nature of the intersection is hardly given any attention.
Considering the beneficiary categorization of members of the transgender community, the drastic reduction in the vulnerability index of such schemes can be highlighted. The story of Radha (name changed to protect identity) is one such example. She says, “I was known by the name Ravi for most part of my life. I was constantly teased for my mannerisms and demeanor. I was abused and everyone I met He used to call me by mean names.
Born in a laboring family, Radha spent sleepless nights doubting and doubting her own identity. Gender based discrimination in school eventually led her to drop out of school due to lack of information about support for government schemes. As she grew up, she realized the importance of representation of identity and, more so, the price of its lack.
Disturbing stories like Radha’s has left us staring even more since the pandemic struck and the subsequent lockdown. The implementation of the schemes has borne the brunt of this, making the working class even more vulnerable. When workers moved to different cities to work in factories during the Industrial Revolution, the German and British governments failed to notice a decline in their health and well-being, unless they were forced to recruit soldiers for military campaigns. Men volunteered for it, only to find it malnourished and often ill.
Suddenly, poor nutrition and housing costs, and inadequate public health services such as clean water, air and sanitation facilities became a national problem, revolutionizing the way governments imagined their obligations. Globally, the administration may be slow to recognize the point when economic and social change requires a rethinking of plans and policies. They are often the result of a national or political crisis, with COVID-19 being the most recent example.
Chhattisgarh’s perspective
The Labor Department in Chhattisgarh, along with organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), is currently taking steps to address these issues. Recently a lifecycle analysis of workers was conducted, exploring the interventions available to them at every level from different departments. Deficiencies in our research brought up concerns with respect to schemes where various vulnerabilities were represented. It also highlighted the need to clarify duplication of existing databases to design embedded policies with both greater coverage and deeper penetration through classification based on gender, class, caste and ability.
Our focus is on plans that have insufficient coverage and do not meet the mentioned intersections. Chhattisgarh has about 1 crore children in the age group of 6-25 years, which is about 40% of the total population of the state. Despite this immense potential for high demographic dividend, educational outcomes in terms of eligibility and attendance are poor, according to the Annual Status of Education Report survey. Children from certain castes or tribes, who are disabled and women/trans persons, have very poor both enrollment and learning outcomes.
Our research found that the Department of Labor offers educational scholarships under the BoCW scheme, but it does not address issues of enrollment and learning outcome. In 2019, only 6% of eligible children took advantage of the Nainihal Chhatravrutti Yojana, an existing scholarship scheme for children of laborers in Chhattisgarh.
This scholarship scheme is subsequently being redesigned with a focus on providing universal coverage of the educational needs of children of laborers and additional top-up/gap fillers, based on precise classification of gender, caste, ability and The most vulnerable people are being given priority on the basis. parents occupation.
An existing maternity scheme is also being revamped to provide wage compensation for pregnant and lactating mothers in terms of both benefit amount and coverage in case of abortion, while creating a system for the use of minimal paperwork. Is. In addition, our current health plan has been redesigned to ensure protection against out-of-pocket health care expenses for critical illnesses for vulnerable but above poverty line labor families within the unorganized sector (including BOCW) going, and whoever does not have priority or Antyodaya ration card as assistance in Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister Special Health Assistance Scheme.
Labor market vulnerability has been a challenge in most industrialized countries, as they continually strive to find an equitable mix of policies that meet both the social goal of reducing vulnerability and the economic goal of increasing competitiveness. can. While there is no universal answer to this problem, it is clear that newly industrialized countries like India have considerable discretion in choosing their strategy.
Planning redesigning processes that look at the whole picture create this feeling among all the individuals involved in sharing the same space. Dignity is basically a social phenomenon that arises through representation, access and interaction. It becomes uninteresting when the moral and ethical compass of policy makers and society rests on the constitutional values of equality, and this process of inculcating values must first begin by highlighting the fault lines.
(Alex Paul Menon, IAS, Labor Commissioner, Labor Department, Government of Chhattisgarh. Geetanjali Dasgupta is an expert on Labor Welfare and Social Security, United Nations Development Programme)