Let 91% majority count!
A very large segment of our population ekes out its living in the unorganised sector. We can afford to neglect their skilling and livelihood needs only at a great cost to the nation, writes GS Sethi, based on a presentation by Dr P Basak

India is a young nation, has been said quite too often. The fact as it is, the million dollar question is whether it will really work out to be a demographic dividend, as propounded rather with equal frequency, and if so how and when. It is true that in 2020, the average age of an Indian is estimated to be 29 years, in comparison to 37 in China, 45 in the US and Europe and 48 in Japan. But equally alarming are the projections for 2015 that in India there will be 80 crore people in the reproductive age while in China, it will be only 60 crore. This is a number game, involving rather huge numbers. The strategy for 12th Plan, of course, rightly includes focus on youth in terms of inclusive growth in health and education. It includes means for adequate access to opportunities and skill development – an obvious effort towards social justice.

Composition of workforce
The composition of youth workforce as per 2008 figures is that out of a total of 50 crore of them, 45.5 crore (91 per cent) were engaged in unorganised sector (UOS) and the remaining only 9 per cent in the organised sector (OS). In other words, for every single youth in the OS, there are more than 10 in the UOS. There is, of course, disparity between urban and rural workforce – in urban areas, the unorganised sector accounts for 60-67 per cent of employment.

Dr P Basak, Chief Scientific Adviser, International Institute of Disaster Management, Pune, compares the vast difference between size of unorganised and organised workforce to that between an elephant and a hare. What is peculiar about UOS, in his words includes:

• Poor, marginalised and vulnerable (vast majority of them BPL). According to UNESCO, one out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an India.
  
• No school goers or school dropouts and they constitute about 90 per cent of our youth and only 5 per cent of them have undergone any formal skill
  training for the jobs they perform.
  
• Good majority of them migrate and are dispersed all over the country.
  
• They have no security for job, income, health, education, food and life.

Further Dr Basak divides workers in UOS into four categories:

Class I – Workers in the survival-type activities: Vendors of perishables and non-perishable items (vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, locks, clothes, vessels); garbage collectors, rag and scrap pickers; head-loaders, construction and agricultural workers, rickshaw and cart pullers etc.
Class II – Paid domestic workers: Maids, gardeners, drivers, etc.
Class III – Self-employed in micro enterprises:
Road-side mechanics, barbers, cobblers, carpenters, tailors, book binders; owners of small stalls and kiosks etc.
Class IV – Home-based workers: Garment makers, embroiderers, incense stick rollers, bidi rollers, paper bag makers, kite makers, food processors etc.

Contributions of UOS
UOS workers are not only huge in numbers, but their contribution to the national wealth is huge too, although they receive much less recognition in return. The staggering figures of their contribution are – 60 per cent of net domestic product, 68 per cent of incomes, 65 per cent of savings, 31 per cent of agricultural exports, 41 per cent of manufactured exports. Such being the contribution to nation building, what could be done to this vast majority? One way could be to help them acquire relevant skill education for their livelihood i.e. providing them skill diversity matching with livelihood diversity, providing guidance and leadership. Let there be linking of skill education with the livelihood, linking of UOS workforce with their traditional livelihood, linking of the existing vast livelihood diversity in the country to design highly diversified skill programmes across the country.

In terms of providing guidance and leadership, Dr Basak feels that the following is the least that the country can do for the UOS workers:

• Do research on the livelihood pattern of the existing 91 per cent of the youth and their families.
  
• Understand and respect the livelihood diversity of the country and draw programmes on the
  empowerment of each and every UOS youth worker concerning the livelihood he/ she has chosen.
  
• Find and develop skill programmes for each of the type of livelihood and thus setting up of the programmes on livelihood-linked skill.
  
• This exercise will increase the existing skill training programmes from mere 30 or 40 to nearly 3,000 or more (learn from Chinese experience).

A serious danger is waiting to overpower the country unless the vast majority of UOS is taken care of; the danger is that “we become a fragile state”, believes Dr Basak. Fragility indicates extreme inequality (in wealth, in access to land, in access to the means to making a living); in social terms institutions may embody extreme inequality or lack of access altogether to health or education.

When a state becomes fragile, social unrest like that witnessed in Egypt, Libya and Syria is often the result (too much gap between rich and poor, OS and UOS). In India, let Naxal movement and 2G and 3G prisoners cannot be lost sight of.

[Based on presentation made by Dr P Basak, Chief Scientific Adviser, International Institute of Disaster Management, Pune, at the 5th National Skill Conference on 16-17 December, 2011 at Kolkata organised by Functional Vocational Training and Research Society]

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