Actualité scientifique
Scientific news
N° 409
July 2012
Actualidad cientifica
Employment in India:
increasingly informal
Informal, i.e. unregulated and
unprotected employment, is
not a residual phenomenon
likely to disappear. In the
neoliberal context of global
competition, processes
making business more
flexible and informal are at
work everywhere. An IRD
scientist and his colleagues1
are exploring the case of
India. Economic growth in
© IRD / D. Rechner
the country goes
hand-in-hand with a
deterioration in working
conditions and growing
informal employment
Informal labour does not just affect minor merchant activity but penetrates all sectors of the economy such as that of construction (here in Hyderabad in southern
India).
representing 92% of the
workforce. This reality
translates into numerous
local situations where
employers play on caste,
gender or geographic origin
and mobility in various ways.
Exploitation, even including
forms of debt bondage, can
nevertheless be seen by
workers as a means of
integrating and accessing
consumption. Their desire for
modernity and social mobility
also contributes to the
conditions of their hardship.
For more than ten years in India, the regulated
economic sector, in particular services, has seen
rapid growth. Yet, jobs are increasingly informal and
flexible, characteristics which can be seen in all
sectors of business. This employment informality
does not strictly correspond to the informal sector: it
concerns all jobs not regulated by law or governed by
labour law and social protection.
The extent of informal employment
Between 1994 and 2004, the workforce grew from
397 to 457 million people. This growth was fully
absorbed by informal jobs representing over 90% of
the labour market. Formal jobs have decreased,
including with registered and regulated companies, at
a rate of 0.3% per year. For example, the proportion
of jobs with no written contract or commitment under
a year has increased. In this context, progress made
in terms of social legislation and worker protection is
failing to reach the masses. The Indian case is repre-
sentative of changes at work in a time of neoliberal
globalisation. Local case studies are enabling an IRD
researcher and colleagues1 to document the origins.
Externalisation, migrant workers
and feminisation
The clothing sector is an example of a globalised
industry where outward codes of conduct in terms of
corporate responsibility are clashing with “codes of
practice” at work. Various processes of informalization can be identified where companies exploit caste,
gender or geographical origin and mobility in various
ways to reduce costs. In the Delhi region to the north,
production is highly fragmented and compartmentalised. It is partly based on factories employing migrant
workers, more than three quarters of whom are occasional or temporary staff. The rest of production,
more than half, is sub-contracted to small artisan
units or piece-paid home workers who have no
access to the export market. In the Bangalore region
For more information
to the south, while factories use more permanent
workers, it is in favour of increasing feminisation of
the business. Comprised of 90% women, the workforce is paid less than the Delhi tailors, on the pretext
that they are less qualified, and subject to more insidious forms of insecurity: one third of the workers are
renewed every year.
Local social dynamics
Migrant workers may be subject to new forms of
enslavement. Indebted to their employers due to
advances paid on recruitment, they have to work for
low wages, or even none at all, to repay their loan.
This new form of enslavement is common today in
south-east Asia, in particular in India. It concerns
10% of informal Indian workers, or about 40 million
people. It is the case in the brick industry in Tamil
Nadu, in the south of the country, which relies on
migrant workers coming and going from rural areas.
How employers have exploited the decline of Indian
agriculture over the last few decades, creating a huge
pool of poor and vulnerable workers, depends on the
regions.
How villagers participate in the migration economy is
also diverse. It is influenced by agricultural characteristics (soil quality, water resources, more or less
labour-intensive crops). Indeed, local socio-economic
dynamics, in particular caste relations governing
access to work and land ownership, depend on it.
Two groups can be distinguished in the Tamil Nadu
migrants for example. The first are from the irrigated
regions. For them, migrating is not the rule and only
used as a last resort. They are considered a flexible
workforce, used for peaks in production, and experience the worst working conditions.
A second group consists of migrants from villages in
the dry areas. Specialised in brick moulding for forty
years, they are seen as a more qualified and reliable
workforce. For them, migration which is common, is a
way of integrating modern life and obtaining freedom
in village contexts where the caste system is more
flexible. They have considerable power of negotiation, used to obtain better working conditions, but
also higher advances to meet the consumption needs
inherent with their status as migrant workers. They
can see the sum received from the employer as a
guarantee of a job, rather than a debt, or a means of
starting a business or asserting one’s social position
through ceremonies and rituals.
Contacts
Isabelle Guérin, researcher at IRD
[email protected]
UMR Développement et Scociétés - DevSoc
(IRD / Université Paris I Panthéon
Sorbonne)
Address
IEDES
Campus du Jardin d’agronomie tropicale
de Paris
45 bis avenue de la Belle Gabrielle
94736 Nogent sur Marne
References
Lerche J., Guérin Isabelle, Srivastava R.
(ed.), Labour standards in India, Global
Labour Journal, Special Issue, vol 3,
issue 1, 2012, 193 p.
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/
globallabour/vol3/iss1/
Employers thus take advantage of employees’
constraints and expectations. However paradoxical it
may seem, workers’ desire for integration and equality tend to reproduce the conditions for their exploitation: a vicious circle at the margins of progress in
work protection.
Key words
Informal labour, India, migrants,
neoliberalism
By Karine Delaunay, DIC
Coordination
Gaëlle Courcoux
1. This work was conducted with partners from the EHESS and the University of Bordeaux IV, the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS) and the Universities of Oxford and East Anglia in the United Kingdom, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the French
Pondichéry Institute in India.
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© IRD/DIC, june 2012 - Design and graphics: L. CORSINI
The clothing industry and brick manufacturing are sectors where the workforce is considerably exploited and where workers gain what they need to satisfy some of their
consumer desires.
Indigo, IRD Photo Library
© IRD / M. Donnat
© EHESS / D. Picherit
©IRD / D. Rechner
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