The gig is up!
People Matters|People Matters - February 2020
Examining the rising trend to hire non-contractual workers in India and the proposed Industrial Relations Code Bill, 2019
Manav Seth
The gig is up!

A recent report has brought to fore a critical employment trend in India, and an unrelated development regarding the proposed changes in the Industrial Code Relations Bill (2019) sets the tone for how workers will be hired in the future. Let’s take a closer look at the findings of the report and analyze the government’s proposal to update the existing labor laws.

What the report says

A recent report, titled “Emerging Employment Patterns of 21st Century in India”, authored by Laveesh Bhandari of Indicus Foundation and Amaresh Dubey of Jawaharlal Nehru University, discovered some interesting trends in the hiring patterns of India Inc1. The report, commissioned by the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to the Prime Minister, analyzed employment data from three surveys of the National Sample Survey Organization and found that since 2012, the organized sector in India has been increasingly hiring casual (or non-contractual) workers. Furthermore, the report found that the rate of employment growth (0.8 percent) has been nearly half the rate of population growth (1.7 percent) over the same period.

Traditionally, the unorganized sector hires a higher number of casual workers as this employment is neither registered nor follows labor laws. However, as per the findings of the report, the number of non-contractual workers has been rising in the organized sector as well; their number rose from 2.44 crore in 2012 to 3.61 crore in 2018. In contrast, the number of contractual workers rose from 2.65 crores to 2.80 crores during the same period. This was one of the two studies commissioned by the EAC to dispel some confusion related to employment data. The other one was undertaken by Surjit Bhalla and provided conflicting results because it did not distinguish between the ‘organized and unorganized’ employment, Bibek Debroy, chairman of EAC, was quoted saying.

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