The spread of the unorganized sector has increased but there is a lack of adequate facilities

- Atapata-Dhawal Mehta of Arthakaran

- Millions of people in this sector do not get allowances, pensions or insurance facilities

It is estimated that 80 per cent of the people in India work in the unorganized sector and contribute 30 per cent to the GDP. In rural India, especially in the agricultural world, most of the employment is in the unorganized sector where working hours are not fixed and there is no guarantee of employment. In the urban sector, loose laborers, retail artisans, construction laborers, hawkers, lorries, vegetable growers, scrap buyers working in very small units, waste weavers, housewives and servants, cart owners and freighters work in the unorganized sector. In which there is no facility of pension or provident fund or salary or vacation during holidays. Many of them are daily earners and their remuneration is much lower than that of workers in the organized sector. They live in a state of semi-employment. And the impact of the lockdown is most severe on them. The poorer the country, the greater the number of unorganized workers. They do not have trade unions. Trade unions do not happen because people working in the unorganized sector are scattered.

They change their residence or work and there is no continuity in employment. Political parties try to organize them but those organizations do not work. They have no safety net in life (such as unemployment benefits or health care insurance). Millions of such workers migrate from villages to cities and we have all seen how miserable their condition became during the sudden lockdown.

Large unorganized sector:

An estimated 25 million people in India work in the unorganized sector, most of them in rural areas, and villages account for about 40 per cent of the unorganized sector. Not only farm laborers working in all the unorganized sector of the village but also tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, weavers etc. do their work in the village. An estimated 50 percent work in urban areas. In cities, only 20 percent of the population work in the organized sector. They get regular pay, fixed working hours and those who get weekly leave as well as other leave (medical leave etc.) and their salary is regularly increased every year.

Not a capitalist state but a welfare state is the only solution

Due to the large number of unorganized sector workers in India, the country does not have the budget to provide allowances to everyone but they can be included in the social welfare scheme. E.g. Their children can be educated for free or they can get health services and medicines at affordable prices. This can be considered as a big step in the direction of welfare state. It is a good thing that the Central and State Governments have come up with a variety of welfare schemes for the poor but there is still room for improvement. The condition of the farm laborers has been somewhat better than that of the Kovid-influenced people working in the unorganized sector in the cities. Moreover, Kovid's epidemic did not hurt large and medium-sized companies.

They even had the Zazu Fund to survive the trouble. Only very small or micro and medium sized businesses have been hit hard by the epidemic. The rapid economic recovery after the Kovid epidemic in India shows the resilience of the Indian economy. Just beware of the third wave now. The third wave will destroy us.