India's livelihood crisis is far from over

Amid more curbs and local lockdowns to contain the spread of Covid-19, a new report shows that more than half of permanent salaried workers — or formal workers — moved to informal work by the end of last year.The State of Working India Report 2021 released by researchers at Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment found that as much as 34% of formal workers had moved to self-employment, while 8.5% had shifted to temporarily salaried roles and 9.8% to casual or daily wage work. The choices also varied by religion. “General category workers and Hindus were more likely to move into self-employment while marginalised caste workers and Muslims moved into daily wage work,” says the report.Along with this came a loss in incomes as well. Formal workers took a hit of 5% between September-October of 2019 and 2020. That figure was 17% for temporarily salaried, 18% for self-employed and 13% for casual/daily wage workers.82416719Economist Jean Drèze, speaking at a panel discussion after the launch of the report, said it did not look like the livelihood crisis would be over in another six months, and instead could last 1-3 years. “Vaccination will take time and the virus could mutate into a form that is vaccine-resistant,” he said, underlining the need for long-term, rather than ad-hoc, measures to protect lives and livelihoods.The report showed that the poorest of workers have taken the worst hit, with an additional 230 million people slipping below the national minimum wage line of ₹375 per day (as recommended by the Anoop Satpathy committee) during last year’s lockdown. This translates into an increase in poverty by 15% in rural areas and nearly 20% in urban areas.The poorest 20% lost nearly all their income due to unemployment during the lockdown, while the top 20% lost a little less than a quarter.The report highlights the stark difference in the way men and women have been impacted. More than 46% of women lost jobs during the lockdown and did not get back into employment, while this figure was 7% for men. Women tend to move back into employment as casual wage workers, while men move into self-employment.“[Women’s employment] is usually more precarious and harder hit. Second, the burden of domestic work on women shot up so the exit of women could be related to their inability to find the time to balance the two,” said Amit Basole, a co-author of the report, adding that further study would be needed to determine the precise reasons for the decline.A third of workers in the 15-24 age group failed to recover employment even by December 2020. This figure was lower at 6% in the 25-44 age group.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3nSuchh