Search

Begin New Search Publication Year within 5 Years

16321. Building a Social Security Architecture for Informal Workers in India, Finally!

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Social protection and social security have very limited coverage in India. This reality has not changed since independence, one of greatest failures of the development strategy India adopted in the early fifties. The labour force is predominantly unorganized. As much as 91 per cent of the labour force are in informal employment, i.e. without any social insurance we estimated from the NSO’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18) (Mehrotra and Parida, 2019). This is barely down 2 percentage points from 93% in 2011-12 (NSO’s 68th Round). In fact, regardless of the growth rate of GDP, this high share of informality in the workforce had not changed until 2012, and when it fell recently, it did so by merely 2 points. The rest 9 per cent of the workforce has varying levels of social security in the form of provident fund, paid leave, medical insurance and other benefits.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Social Policy, Social Security, Welfare, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

16322. Did Employment Rise or Fall in India between 2011 and 2017? Estimating Absolute Changes in the Workforce

Author:
Amit Basole and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The recently released data from the 2017-2018 Periodic Labour Force Survey have created a controversy regarding the quantity of employment generated in the past few years in India. Estimates ranging from an absolute increase of 23 million to an absolute decline of 15.5 million have been published. In this paper we show that some of the variation in estimates can be explained by the way in which populations are projected based on Census 2011 data. We estimate the change in employment using the cohort-component method of population projection. We show that for men total employment rose but the increase fell far short of the increase in working age population. For women, employment fell. The decline is concentrated among women engaged in part-time or occasional work in agriculture and construction.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

16323. Income Distribution and Effective Demand in the Indian Economy

Author:
Zico Dasgupta
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Does there exist a trade-off between labour’s income share and output growth rate? Or does a reduction in wage share in itself reduces the output growth rate? These questions have returned to the centre stage in the midst of India’s present crisis as the government sought the dilution and suspension of labour laws as a counter-cyclical policy instrument. In the absence of any other stimulus or countervailing factors, the impact of such a policy would hinge on the relationship between income distribution and effective demand. This paper attempts to lay bare this relationship for the Indian economy through an empirical analysis of India’s macro data and a theoretical model on the basis of regression results.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Demand
Political Geography:
India

16324. Economic Transition, Dualism, and Informality in India: Nature and Patterns of Household-level Transitions

Author:
Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
We examine the Indian economy during a peak period of high growth between 2005-2012 to analyze nature and patterns of household-level transitions across the different sectors of the economy and to relate these transitions to the broader process of structural change. We use a pan-India household-level panel data to categorize households according to their primary income sources into seven sectors characterized by varying degrees of formality/informality and various production structures and labour processes. We find that even this this relatively brief period, there has been a very large volume of transitions of households across these sectors. However, despite such volumes of transitions, the overall economic structure, and its segmentations, has continued to be reproduced, along with a regeneration of ‘traditional’ informal spaces that were often expected to dissolve over time with high economic growth. To ascertain the nature of these transitions – ‘favorable’ or ‘unfavorable’ – in terms of economic well-being of households, we employ a counterfactual analysis. We find that a majority of the transitions in the economy during the period of analysis have been ‘unfavourable’ in nature, with large proportion of households transitioning to sectors that are not ‘optimal’ locations for them, given their socio-economic characteristics. Further, using a multinomial logit regression framework, we find that the likelihood and nature of these transitions significantly vary with household characteristics, some of which, like social caste, are structurally given and cannot be optimally chosen by households. This dynamic process of reproducing a rather stagnant structure, along with substantial ‘unfavourable’ transitions towards ‘traditional’ informal economic spaces that are continuously reshuffled and reconstituted, provide insights into the complexity of India’s development trajectory that is often glossed over in the literature.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
India

16325. Mechanisms of Surplus Appropriation in the Informal Sector: A Case Study of Tribal Migrants in Ahmedabad’s Construction Industry

Author:
Rahul De
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper is based on fieldwork I had undertaken regarding tribal migrant workers in the construction sector, in Ahmedabad in May-July 2018, coordinated by Aajevika Bureau(AB). I had undertaken this fieldwork to assess the work of AB and advise them about strategies to collectivize migrant labour groups. While interacting with a particular social group (Bhil tribals from South West Rajasthan) who work in the construction sector, I struggled to capture the specificity of their experience through the concept of informal labour. This paper is an attempt to characterize the specificity of their social experience, while also, reframing the concept of informal labour. I use the concept of labour process (Michael Burawoy: Manufacturing Consent) to argue that there is not a binary or one-dimensional power relationship between informal labour and owner/state/capital, but instead, the process of surplus appropriation occurs at multiple nodes through different agents. In this paper, I have identified multiple modes of surplus extraction which are embedded as institutions or social norms in the labour process. Further, I argue that there is a close link between the status of tribal workers as marginalized within society, and their status as displaced and marginalized in their living areas and workplace. This difference translates into identity based discrimination faced in the city, as well as, structural exclusion from the governance apparatus faced as migrants. Therefore, tribal migrant workers do not earn enough to subsist and are highly dependent on early child birth, non-remunerated services of their family and the social security net provided by their village community. This paper concludes that primitive accumulation, fragmenting land ownership and indebtedness creates a supply of tribal migrants, who have no other recourse to employment and are forced to work in the deplorable conditions found in the construction sector. Tribal migrant workers in the informal sector are an important population to target for social policies, because they are more vulnerable than other social identities. This paper hopes to contribute to the framing of interventions and policies that civil society organizations and state authorities can implement to improve the terms of employment and working conditions of informal labour.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Migrant Workers
Political Geography:
India

16326. Improving Pandemic Preparedness: Lessons From COVID-19

Author:
Thomas J. Bollyky and Stewart M. Patrick
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States and the world were caught unprepared by the COVID-19 pandemic despite decades of warnings of the threat of global pandemics and years of international planning. The failure to adequately fund and execute these plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price. Hundreds of thousands of lives have already been lost, and the global economy is in the midst of a painful contraction. The crisis—the greatest international public health emergency in more than a century—is not over. It is not too early, however, to begin distilling lessons from this painful experience so that the United States and the world are better positioned to cope with potential future waves of the current pandemic and to avoid disaster when the next one strikes, which it surely will. This CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report seeks to do just that, framing pandemic disease as a stark threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore again. It argues that future pandemic threats are inevitable and possibly imminent; policymakers should prepare for them and identify what has gone wrong in the U.S. and multilateral response. One of the most important lessons of this pandemic is that preparation and early execution are essential for detecting, containing, and rapidly responding to and mitigating the spread of potentially dangerous emerging infectious diseases. As harmful as this coronavirus has been, a novel influenza could be even worse, transmitting even more easily, killing millions more people, and doing even more damage to societies and economies alike. This Task Force proposes a robust strategy consisting of critical institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the world perform better. Although there is no substitute for effective political leadership, The recommendations proposed here would if implemented place the nation and the world on a firmer footing to confront humanity’s next microbial foe. The Task Force presents its findings grouped into three sections: the inevitability of pandemics and the logic of preparedness; an assessment of the global response to COVID-19, including the performance of the World Health Organization (WHO), multilateral forums, and the main international legal agreement governing pandemic disease; and the performance of the United States, while also drawing lessons from other countries, including several whose outcomes contrast favorably with the U.S. experience.
Topic:
International Cooperation, World Health Organization, Pandemic, COVID-19, Health Crisis, and Global Health
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16327. Global Trade Cooperation after COVID-19: What is the WTO's Future?

Author:
Peter Draper
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
International trade cooperation has been under growing strains since at least the turn of the twenty-first century. Forces promoting global trade integration were in the ascendancy for most of the first decade. They were anchored on com- plex production specialisation mediated through cross-border value chains, underpinned by con- sumer demand for a variety of cost-effective prod- ucts, and cemented through regional and bilateral trade agreements. However, since 2008, succes- sive shocks unleashed cumulative disintegrative forces that counter-balanced and now threaten to overwhelm the forces of integration. These com- prise rising nationalism, associated desires for sovereignty, growing concerns over uneven distri- bution of the benefits of economic globalisation, shifting international power balances and associ- ated security concerns. These disintegrative forces threaten to unravel the World Trade Organization (WTO). COVID-19 mostly accelerates this trajec- tory, rendering WTO reform and restoration to its central role at the apex of the global trading sys- tem increasingly challenging. But all is not lost, as the forces of global trade integration have not dissipated and every crisis also presents reform opportunities.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, World Trade Organization, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16328. Tech Power to the People! Democratising Cutting-edge Technologies to Serve Society

Author:
Renata Avila Pinto
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Governments all over the world are adopting cutting-edge technologies to experiment with quicker, cheaper and more efficient delivery of services traditionally provided by human beings. From citizen security to allocation of social ben- efits, technologies are being deployed at a rapid pace, the aim being to serve people better, reduce costs and enhance accountability. The results are mixed. In some cases, the technologies exclude entire groups of the population, thereby exacer- bating race, gender or economic inequalities. In other cases, technology is used to surveil specific groups or communities, eroding their right to pri- vacy. And there are no clear remedies to mitigate the harm done by machines or to increase the accountability of those deploying the systems. However, when designing tech interventions, universal human rights, democratic rules and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should shape the initiatives of the public sector. An important prerequisite is a higher degree of autonomy from big tech companies. Further- more, participatory design and testing in collabo- ration with the communities the technologies are intended to serve are needed, not only to avoid harm but to increase effectiveness and quality.
Topic:
Development, Science and Technology, Governance, Inequality, and Sustainability
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16329. Recommendations for Electoral Reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Author:
Typhaine Roblot, Manuel Wally, Rushdi Nackerdien, Kimberly Riddle, and Adele Ravida
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Abstract:
The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) 2018-19 elections were followed by the country’s first peaceful and democratic transfer of executive power. However, the elections – particularly their results management – were widely criticized. While voters appear to have ultimately accepted the results, lingering uncertainty could depress future voter turnout and undermine the current government’s authority. This post-electoral period offers an unprecedented opportunity to initiate broad electoral reforms to shore up the credibility of future elections. A white paper from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) analyzes the DRC context and finds that the government or Parliament could initiate the reform process. IFES then highlights comparative examples of electoral reform from Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire and presents considerations and recommendations for the DRC. Given that truly inclusive, sustainable and holistic electoral reform could take years to complete, the process should begin now to ensure more credible, transparent elections in 2023 and beyond.
Topic:
Reform, Elections, Transparency, Transition, and Rigged Elections
Political Geography:
Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo

16330. OFES COVID-19 Brefing Series: Preventing Government Corruption in Crises

Author:
Erica Shenin
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Abstract:
Preventing Government Corruption in Crises, the fifth paper in the International Foundation for Electoral Systems’ (IFES) COVID-19 Briefing Series, looks closely at this question and offers guidance for democracy and governance practitioners, policymakers and supporters. Corruption undermines the efficiency and efficacy of government, which, in the short term, can derail the response to a public emergency. It also drives distrust in democratic institutions, including legislatures, executive agencies and courts. As a result, corruption by bad actors in public office – whether for personal or political gain – has the potential to damage the credibility and integrity of governments long after the immediate crisis has passed. The long-term ill effects of political corruption must not be ignored, given the potential for state capture and the entrenchment of incumbent regimes. This risk is especially concerning as many elections have been postponed and modified as a result of the health crisis, subverting the ultimate accountability measure for governments. The unprecedented volume of funds being deployed to address the COVID-19 crisis and bolster economies creates new opportunities for exploitation and undermining of accountability mechanisms in several key areas.
Topic:
Corruption, Elections, Democracy, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus