The
National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) set up by Government of India,
periodically produces reports on various aspects of Indian economy and society.
Its methods and conclusions have always been subject to much debate, but
nevertheless it provides the most credible source of information as it is based
on door to door survey of actual people and not on any data generated by
government departments. In recent years the Modi government has been at great
pains to either block the publication of NSSO reports or discredit them
altogether, simply because it has been pointing to several negative trends in
the performance of the economy. The latest in this is the tussle over the
Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) annual report1, a survey which
had concluded in June 2018, but whose results were not allowed to be made
public till May 2019 after many of the conclusions had been leaked to the
press. It was published well after most of the polling for the 2019 General
Elections had been completed and could not impact voter mood. So what was in it
that was so damaging to the Modi Government? What is being
talked about is the significant and unprecedented increase in
unemployment especially among the educated youth and the dangerous decline in
female participation in labour force during the last five years (after 2012
when the previous survey had been conducted). These findings were corroborated
by independent survey compiled by Azim Premji
University.2 This is a damning verdict on the economic performance
of the Modi government which came to power with the claim that it will restore
the economy and eliminate unemployment. It marks the failure of its high
profile campaign to attract foreign direct investment (‘Make in India’), hare
brained schemes like withdrawal of high value currency notes (‘demonetisation)
ostensibly to eradicate ‘black money’, and the poorly conceptualised and
disastrously implemented policy of unification of all indirect taxes under one
central tax called Goods and Services Tax (GST). The Modi government had
imagined that by opening land market in rural and forest areas it will
facilitate some form of ‘primitive accumulation’ leading to a spurt in
industrial production and employment generation. This met with stiff resistance
of the peasants and adivasis forcing the government
to withdraw the bill which sought to nullify the legal protection granted under
previous government. Then it mounted an attack on the country’s principal
employment sector – the unorganised sector by the ill-advised ‘demonetisation’,
which drained the vast informal economy of its life blood – cash. The
consequent slowing down of the economy meant forced decline of employment for
nearly a year in all sectors and a resultant decline in demand in the market.
As the economy slowly recovered from this onslaught another blow was stuck in
the name of unifying the national market with a single indirect tax. It imposed
a complex reporting system on all employers, shopkeepers and even freelance
workers (‘service providers’). This virtually brought the economy again to a
standstill.
| Demographic Profile Estimates in (000) |
|||||||||
| Rural | Urban | All | |||||||
| Male | Female | Total | Male | Female | Total | Male | Female | Total | |
| 388882 | 370273 | 759277 | 160213 | 154569 | 314826 | 549095 | 524842 | 1074103 | |
| % | 70.7 | 29.3 | |||||||
Households: The report estimates a total population of about 1074 million people living in about 257 million households giving an average of over 4 persons per household. 71% of them live in rural areas indicating only about 30% urbanisation. This preponderantly rural character of the Indian labour force should be kept in mind while reading rest of the data, which gives rural and urban figures separately.
These 257 million households are divided into three
broad categories of ‘self-employed’, salaried or regular wage employment and
thirdly casual labour. This is obviously not a class category in the sense that
the ‘self employed’ will include the small peasants, landlords and rural
capitalist farmers as well as petty shopkeepers, fruit sellers, etc of the
towns and also capitalists of various sizes. However, given the fact that the
presence of capitalists in these samples is likely to be small, we can presume
that these categories broadly refer to petty producers, blue collared workers/
government employees and proletarians respectively. The distribution of the
rural households over these broad categories is as follows:
| Table 1. Distribution of Rural households by livelihood in % | ||
| 2011-12 |
2017-18 |
|
| Self Employed in agriculture | 34 |
38 |
| Self Employed in non-agricultural work | 16 |
14 |
| Total Self Employed | 50 |
52 |
| Salaried / regular wage earning | 10 |
13 |
| Casual Labour in agriculture | 21 |
12 |
| Casual labour in non-agricultural work | 13 |
13 |
| Total Casual Labour | 34 |
25 |
| Others | 6 |
10 |
| (Statement 3 of PLFS Report) |
||
This table gives us a snapshot of rural society of
India: About 38% of the rural households can be categorised as ‘peasant’
households in that they till their own farms. While another 14% of rural
households are self-employed or own their own petty means of production – could
be artisans or shop keepers. Thus nearly half the rural population consists of
petty producers. The other half is clearly dependent upon wage labour of
diverse kinds – some are regular salaried (school teachers, government
employees etc) and wage earners. Most others (about 25% of all rural
households) depend upon ‘casual wage labour’.
A comparison with the previous NSS survey of 2011-12
shows some important changes. It shows a significant increase in the households dependent upon fanning and salaried or regular
wage earning. On the other hand, the percentage of households dependent upon
agricultural labour has declined steeply from 21% to 12%. Similarly
households dependent upon non-agricultural self employment too shows a decline.
This perhaps indicates a decline of wage labour used
in agriculture due to increased mechanisation. It may also indicate a decline
in non-agricultural production in the rural areas as an aftermath of the
demonetisation etc, which has forced people back to agriculture. This is
otherwise incongruous with the general expected trend of decline in percentage
of the population dependent upon agriculture as an economy heads towards
capitalist development.
We shall now turn our attention from ‘households’ to
individuals living in the rural areas.
The survey shows persistence of illiteracy in the
rural population, especially among women. The literacy rate in the population
above the age of seven years (when children should have spent at least two
years of schooling): for males – 81% and for females 65%. That is, nearly 20 %
of the males and 35% females in the rural areas are illiterate and thus any
employment opportunity other than casual manual labour (or subordinate domestic
labour) is closed to them. However, it should be admitted that over the last
10-15 years the literacy situation has been steadily improving in the rural
areas – in 2004-05 the literacy rate for rural males was 73% and for rural
females was a mere 51%. To some extent one may attribute this improvement to
the passage of the Right to Education Act in 2007 which led to a concerted
effort to bring all children to the school.
A closer look at education levels among the youth who
constitute and will constitute the core of the working population in the coming
years will be useful.
| Table 2. % Distribution of Rural Youth (15-29 years) by educational levels |
||||||||
| Not Literate |
Up to Class V |
Up to Class VI11 |
Class IX and above |
|||||
| 2004-5 |
2017-18 | 2004-5 | 2017-18 | 2004-5 | 2017-18 | 2004-5 | 2017-18 | |
| Male |
17 |
6 |
27 |
13 |
27 |
29 |
28 |
53 |
| Female |
38 |
13 |
24 |
16 |
19 |
27 |
19 |
43 |
| (Statement 6 of PLFS Report) | ||||||||
While the share of illiterate persons has declined
significantly during the intervening decade, the percentage of children
completing formal schooling of ten years appears to be substantially on the
increase: 53% male and 43% female, doubling during the decade. A part of this
improvement may be attributed to efforts of the state subsequent to the passing
of the RTE Act in 2007. During the early part of this period the public
spending on education as percentage of the GDP grew marginally to 3.1% in 2013.
This share has subsequently shrunk during the Modi government tenure to 2.7% in
2018-19. However, we should remember that is also the period when education has
been increasingly privatised both formally through the increase of private
schools and informally through tuition and coaching centres. Thus the cost of
schooling has been in the main borne by the labouring people themselves. This
table clearly shows the huge investment the Indian working people are making in
educating their children, ensuring that they complete their schooling.
Nevertheless, it is a matter of concern that nearly 13% girls and 7%
boys are entering the labour market without being able to read
or write and another 16% girls and 13% boys are barely literate. Even
more
worrying is the fact that of the working population of Indian rural
areas
(persons above 15 years of age) we find abysmally low education:
| Table 3. % Distribution of Rural Population (15+ years) by educational levels 2017-18 | ||||
| Illiterate | Up to Class V | Up to Class VIII | Class IX and above | |
| Male |
23 |
18 |
24 |
36 |
| Female |
42 |
18 |
18 |
23 |
| (Statement 13, PLFS report) | ||||
Table 3 shows that a substantial segment of the rural
population (41% males and 60% females) is either illiterate or barely literate
and the gender gap is very large. This leaves the vast majority of the rural
population to fend with its own resources (either petty capital or physical
labour) without any skill acquired from education. It has been argued that lack
of elementary education not only reduces the possibility of employment in high
or moderate income jobs, but also becomes a stumbling block in using legal and
constitutional rights or in simple bargaining with employers or potential
buyers of products (for petty producers).
It is a pity that the survey does not go into the
health status of the population, which along with education is a major factor in
determining the quality of labour of the worker or petty producer. Simple
techniques are available to judge malnutrition or illness during the preceding
six months. We know from other surveys that a large segment of the population
(especially female population) is undernourished. An NSSO report for 2011-123
tells us that substantial segments of rural population in the lower decile
classes based on average expenditure (57% in the lowest and 39% in the second
lowest decile group) were grossly under nourished. We are told that the
percentage of population which is undernourished has been increasing steadily
from 2004-5 reaching 20% in the rural areas. The nourishment they got from food
was mainly in the form of carbohydrates from cereals. The consumption of
protein has been steadily decreasing ever since India entered the era of
globalisation in the early 1990s as the prices of gram (dal)
skyrocketed. Increased consumption of fat has taken the place of protein. An
NSSO report on health of the population conducted in 2014 indicates that about
8% of Rural Males and 10% of rural females reported illness during the previous
fortnight4. A little less than half of them were of chronic nature.
The incidence of chronic illness increased substantially in the 40+ age group
and was alarmingly high in the case of 60+ age group. The same report also
indicates that the poorest strata are facing maximum health hazard: 13% of
those in the lowest income group (among the five income groups) in rural areas
reported illness during the previous fortnight.
It should be noted that educational and health
services level in the region in many ways determined perception of illness and
health. Thus Kerala (31%) followed by West Bengal and Tamil Nadu (16%) reported
the highest morbidity in rural areas while states like Bihar and Assam reported
much less. This is perhaps not because the people of the former states were
facing greater health hazards but more because of their health awareness and
education.
An increasingly undernourished labouring population
susceptible to illness (mostly related to infections resulting from low body
resistance, poor sanitation and contaminated drinking water) with little or no
education is populating the rural labour force of India. While the educational
status has been improving over the last decade or so, the reverse unfortunately
is true for nutrition and health. It can be argued that the rural people of
India, desperate to get out of the poverty are investing heavily into education
even at the cost of their food and health.
Labour
Force Participation Rates
Capitalist notions of productive work require
primarily production of exchange values and as such discounts all labour which
does not produce immediately saleable goods or services. Thus household work of
women, children or old persons is not classed as economic activity at all in
the surveys. However production, which may not be sold but consumed over long
time (as that of small farmers who eat the grain they grow) and infrastructure
building like building one’s own house or digging one’s own well are also
considered economic activity. Often activities like begging, prostitution or
robbery are also not counted as economic activity by some perverted logic.
Out of the entire population only a part is engaged or
willing to engage in productive labour (‘economically active’). Such persons
including those who may be currently unemployed but willing to be employed are
counted within the ‘labour force’. Thus children, school and college going
youth and aged or sick persons are not likely to engage in productive work on a
regular basis. Some others may be constrained by social conventions to keep out
of labour market (caste prejudices). In many ways labour force participation
indicates the level of socialisation of labour, especially reproductive labour,
which enables men and women to perceive all kinds of work as labour and enter
the labour market accordingly. It does not mean that those not included in the
labour force are idling away. Education of children is fast becoming one of the
pernicious forms of child labour where children are prepared as both consumers
in the present and as skilled workers in the future. Often womenfolk are
considered outside the labour force just because they are busy attending to
reproduction of labour (childbirth, rearing, household tasks etc). Old people
too contribute to social work in many ways, but are not categorised as being
part of the labour force. With these reservations let us look at the data regarding
rural labour force participation. Given these qualifications, we may look into
the proportion of the rural population engaged in economic activities as
defined by the NSSO.
According to the 2017-18 NSSO PLF survey, 55% of rural
male population and 18% of the rural female population are counted in the
‘labour force’. However we need to disaggregate these figures to understand the
reality better.
| Table 4. Rural Labour Force Participation and Working Population Estimates |
||||||
| Male % & Persons 000 |
Female % & Persons 000 |
All |
||||
| Labour Force Participation |
54.9% |
225163 |
18.2% |
67390 |
37% |
292553 |
| Workers |
51.7% |
201052 |
17.5% |
64798 |
35% |
265850 |
| Thus of the rural male population only about 52% is working and among rural women only 35% is working. |
||||||
From the details of the data provided in page 192-3 of
the report the following conclusions may be drawn:
A matter of major concern has been a steady decline in
the rate of women’s participation in labour force over the last few decades.
While a large number of countries including Pakistan and Bangladesh have
registered a steady increase in women’s labour participation, India, China and some
south eastern Asian countries have shown decline. Of course, China and South
East Asia had a much higher women’s participation to begin with compared to the
abysmally low level in India. The increase in Bangladesh has been attributed to
the spread of the garment industry which is employing a large number of women
in the rural areas too; and secondly to the success of its micro-credit network
which has enabled a large number of women to access credit and operate self
employed production units. In India the decline has been principally attributed
to greater percentage of youth population attending educational institutions
instead of taking to work. This however, should have shown in greater
employment of women in the 20-25 age group, which is not the case. A second set
of reasons given relate to increase in family incomes and the ability of women
to opt out of work. While the increase in family income is highly debatable,
the Work Participation Ratio for different decile classes (based on average per
capita monthly consumption expenditure) in the rural areas shows that higher
income groups do not necessarily show any significant increase in female labour
participation. Thus the highest decile class in rural areas shows a female WPR
of 19.7% against the lowest decile class figure of 16.5 a mere three percentage
point difference (compare this with the comparable figures for rural male WPR –
57.8% and 45.5%, a difference of 12 percentage points).
What actually appears to be happening is that given
the decline of employment in the post-liberalisation era as evidenced by both
absolute and relative decrease in formal employment, given the overall
patriarchal nature of the society, the menfolk are edging the women out of
employment and confining them to the sphere of domestic labour, conserving
expenses in reproduction of labour. In other words it can mean that in the
current phase of capitalist accumulation, there has been a decline of formal
labour (earning) opportunities; what remain are being controlled by the men,
while women are forced to subsidise this labour by increasing their workload in
the unpaid domestic sphere.
The Decile Class figures also indicate an important
fact –
a higher proportion of the population in the upper Decile classes are
engaged in work than in the lower Decile classes. This indicates that every
working person in the lower decile class has to support a larger number of non
earning members of the household.
Let us now turn to the kind of employment these
workers in the rural areas engage in.
The PLFS report uses the term ‘Status of Employment’
for different kinds of employment, namely, owner operated, regular
wage/salaried and casual work done for others. Table 5 gives us the relevant
information for the rural sector.
We noted above that of the rural population about
51.7% men and 17.5% women were ‘working’. Of this entire rural ‘working force’,
58% were engaged in self-employed category, being mostly peasant households and
petty artisans or shopkeepers. 13% of the rural labour force had employment
which assured them regular wages or salaries. The rest constituting about 29%
of the rural working population were casual labourers. Of the self employed
labour force nearly 17% were working gratis as subordinate family labour. Of
those working gratis, women constituted nearly 56%. This indicates a double
problem with regard to women in the rural areas. While the overall share of
women in the labour force is a meagre 24%, of these nearly 3 9% work gratis in
family enterprises. Further, even in the self employed sector, of the total
workforce engaged in it, only 24% are women. This effectively means that women
work with no control over the resources or incomes from labour, even in this
sector.
| Table 5. Rural Labour Force Participation and Working Population Estimates |
|||||||
| Male |
Female |
All |
|||||
| % |
Estimated Persons in 000 |
% |
Estimated Persons in 000 |
% |
Estimated Persons in 000 |
Women as % of workforce |
|
| Self Employed |
|||||||
| Own Account |
48% |
96,505 |
19% |
12,312 |
41% |
1,08,817 |
11% |
| Unpaid (?) Helper |
10% |
19,703 |
39% |
25,078 |
17% |
44,781 |
56% |
| Total |
58% |
1,16,208 |
58% |
37,390 |
58% |
1,53,598 |
24% |
| Regular Wage/salaried |
14% |
28.148 |
11% |
6,804 |
13% |
34,952 |
19% |
| Casual Worker |
28% |
56,697 |
32% |
20,606 |
29% |
77,303 |
27% |
| Total |
100% |
2,01,053 |
100% |
64,800 |
100% |
2,65,853 |
24% |
| Based on Tables 2, 16, 17, 19 of PLFS report |
|||||||
Regular wage/salary earners constitute about 13% of
the rural labour force. Of this category, only 19% are women while more than
81% are men. These we may largely presume to be a workforce with some education
which enables them to get employment as teachers, government servants of various
kinds and even regular wage earners in shops and establishments.
In
contrast to them nearly 29% of the rural working population engages in
unskilled wage labour on a casual basis. This segment too is predominantly male
(about 73%). We should expect the poorest women to be in this segment. They
constitute 32% of all rural women in the work force, but only 27% of total
casual workers.
We may conclude that patriarchal family based petty
production constitutes the bulk of productive employment in the rural area of
the country, where 70% of the population resides. This sector accounts for
nearly 58% of rural employment. While regular salary/wage employment is
significant engaging about 13% of total rural labouring population, casual wage
labour of the property-less and unskilled kind accounts for about 29%. While
women’s participation in the rural labour force is small, even out of these few
women workers about 39% are not paid for their work.
The nearest to a class profile of the rural population
that we get from this report relates to ‘broad occupational divisions’
(Statement 17), which gives us about nine broad divisions. While these should
not be seen as class categories, they can be safely treated as income groups.
If one may broadly see these as also income groups then the managerial strata
and the professionals would come out as the richest crust of rural society, the
middle income group would be constituted by technicians, clerks, service
workers and skilled agriculturalists. The low income group would include the
skilled crafts-persons (weavers, smiths, potters, etc) working with minimal
capital, machine operators (skilled workers) and ‘elementary workers’ probably
unskilled workers. Thus the rural working population would have about 7% high
income group, 52% middle income group and 41% low income groups. This roughly
maps on the figures for ‘self employed’ and wage workers in Table 5.
It may be noted that women workers are concentrated in
the peasant and unskilled segments and virtually absent in the category of
machine operators.
| Table 6. Percentage distribution of rural workers by broad occupation division | |||
| Division |
Male |
Female |
Persons |
| 1. Managerial | 5 |
3 |
55 |
| 2. Professionals | 2 |
2 |
2 |
| 3. Technicians | 2 |
4 |
3 |
| 4. Clerks | 1 |
0 |
1 |
| 5. Service workers | 7 |
4 |
6 |
| 6. Skilled Agriculturalists | 40 |
47 |
42 |
| 7. Skilled Crafts-persons | 10 |
7 |
9 |
| 8. Machine Operators | 6 |
0 |
4 |
| 9. Elementary workers | 27 |
33 |
28 |
| Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| (Statement 17 of PLFS Report. Division 1: Legislators, senior officials and managers, 2: Professionals, 3: Technicians and associate professionals, 4: Clerks, 5: Service workers and shop & market sales workers, 6: Skilled agricultural and fishery workers, 7: Craft and related trades workers, 8: Plant and machine operators and assemblers, 9: Elementary occupations (unskilled manual workers) | |||
The occupational structure of rural labouring force shows a great degree of diversification and a decreasing reliance on agriculture over the last four decades or so. While agriculture and farming continue to support bulk of the male (55%) and female (73%) labouring population, its share has come down significantly since 1977-78 as can be seen in the table below.
|
Table 7. Change in Oceupartonal Profile of Rural Labour Force
1977-8
to 2017-18 (in %)
|
||||
| 1977-78 | 2017-18 | |||
| Male | Female | Male | Female | |
| Agriculture | 81% |
88% |
55% |
73% |
| Manufacture | 6 |
6 |
8 |
8 |
| Construction | 2 |
1 |
15 |
5 |
| Trade, Hotel | 4 |
2 |
9 |
4 |
| Transport etc. | 1 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
| Others |
5 |
3 |
8 |
10 |
| (Statement 16. of PLFS Report) | ||||
There is a decline of 26 percentage points over the
four decades for men. While 73% labouring women continue to be employed in
agriculture, even here we see a decline of about 15 percentage points. The
substantial decline of rural male population engaged in agriculture has meant
that the share of women in agricultural labour has increased; in 2017-18 thus 43% of total rural labour force engaged in
agriculture were women. This implies a feminisation of agricultural labour as
men shift away from it to engage in other income/wage earning occupations. We
need to see this conjointly with the point made above regarding 39% rural
labouring women being engaged in unpaid labour.
It appears that a significant proportion of rural male
population has shifted to construction, trade and transport. Women too have
used the diversification of employment opportunity in recent years to take up
work in media, finance, administrative support, education, health,
entertainment etc. Nearly ten percent of rural labouring women have taken up
such professions, an increase of 7 percentage points over 1977-78.
Even though agricultural productivity has increased
between 1987 and the present, the fact remains that capital investment
in and
productivity of Indian agriculture remains significantly behind other
sectors (like service sector and to a lesser extent manufacturing). The
shifting of
male population towards these has burdened the rural women with the low
productivity employment of agriculture.
Conditions
of Employment
The forgoing discussion would have made it clear that
the vast majority of the rural population works under conditions of
informality, whether they be ‘self-employed’ peasants and artisans or they be
wage earners. As noted earlier only 13% of the rural labour force can look
forward to ‘regular salary or wage’ and these are overwhelmingly (87%) men. The
PLF survey tells us about the precariousness of even this miniscule minority.
A degree of security is provided to the worker if he
or she is formally engaged through a written contract which then may enable
them to invoke prevalent labour laws in their defence if there is any violation
of the contract. The fact of the matter is that bulk of the rural labouring
population (in non-peasant-agricultural sector) which ‘enjoys’ regular income
from salaries or wages, amounting to nearly 72% of male workers are engaged
without any written contract. While the figure (54%) for women workers of the
same kind may appear brighter, in actual fact it is misleading as the total number
of women workers in this category is miniscule (mere 2% of rural female
population).
To put it differently, less than one tenth of the
rural population works under conditions of formal employment. The rest are
either small peasants or workers without any formal protection. (We need to
qualify this statement as the peasant population may own land which entitles
them to some legal protection as property owners.)
The absence of any formal arrangement naturally
precludes other essential features of decent employment like weekly holidays
and fixed working time, paid leave including leave during sickness,
maternity, etc. The survey shows that more than 58% of rural non agricultural
regular wage earners are not entitled to regular paid leave. It also appears
that this condition has been intensifying over the years as the percentage of
workers without paid leave appears to be steadily increasing over the last
decade. The figure for women is 49% and the same qualification would apply here
as above. It may be noted that a high proportion of regular wage earning women
would be working as school teachers or as government servants and as such would
be entitled to leave.
Likewise most of this category of workers were not entitled to
any social security benefits (pension, gratuity, provident fund, health or
maternity benefits). According to the survey results nearly 52% of male workers
in this category were not eligible for any social security benefits.
The data on hours of work indicate minor variations
over various seasons, but it broadly shows that almost all categories of worker
worked for more than six days a week and put in between 46 to 58 hours every week.
The self employed men who constitute the bulk of the rural workforce, on an
average put in 51 hours of work a week and worked almost on all days of the
week (more than seven hours every day of the week). The hours of work for women
in the self employed sector ranges between 37 to 40 hours a week, an average of
five and a half hours every day of the week. In addition they would be
attending to domestic work like cooking, cleaning, attending to children and
the old and ill persons.
It would appear that the low capital intensive and low
technology work that such self employed persons do at
a pace set by themselves, allows them to work longer on all days of the week.
From the unemployment statistics compiled by the NSSO, it appears that this
category of workers feel that they can work for another seven or nine hours a
week if gainfully employed.
The regular salaried/wage workers of the rural areas
appear to be putting in the longest hours of work, the men working for nearly
58 hours a week (more than eight hours every day of the week); women in this
category also work for over 50 hours a week (again averaging over seven hours
every day of the week). This is the price they pay for their ‘regular’ salaries
or wages. In a highly insecure labour market, relative job security comes with
a stiff bill.
In contrast, casual workers in the rural areas
typically get less work: Male casual workers get work for around 5.6 days a
week and appear to get on an average only 45.3 hours of work a week. (Table 46,
A19) Women casual workers too, get work for five days a week and an average of
37.3 hours work a week. (Table 46, A20) However, this unskilled work can be
highly exhausting so much so that despite putting in lesser hours of work, they
feel disinclined to work more as this category of workers shows least
willingness to extend hours of work. Strangely casual workers work longest (46.4
hours a week) during months when the wages are at the lowest (July to
September) and shortest (44.2 hours per week) during months when the wages are
highest (April to June). Quite possibly, it can mean that given the low wages
during the monsoon months, workers are forced to work longer to make ends meet.
A simple look at these figures tells us that the 150
year old demand of ‘Eight Hours Day’ remains a distant dream for the Indian
labouring masses. Condemned as they are to work for over eight hours every day
of the week, there is little time left for either educational, political,
cultural or recreational purposes.
Let us now turn to the issue of remuneration and
earnings of these workers.
Earnings
of Rural labouring people
Let us first take the category of Regular wage or salary earners (Table 42 of PLFS report) as their earnings can be clearly expressed in terms of monthly earnings. As mentioned above they constitute 13% of the rural working population. We learn that even though the earnings are supposed to be regular, they are not constant over the year and vary from season to season. The range for male workers is between Rs 12,650 (in monsoon months) to Rs. 14,440 (in Spring). Averaging the seasonal variation, we get a figure of monthly salary/wage of Rs. 13,533 for men and Rs. 8938 for women. Assuming from the above discussion on working hours, that women work for 200 hours a month and men work for 232 hours a month, we get the following hourly averages for their respective incomes: women Rs 45 per hour and men Rs 59 per hour. Women thus get about 77.5% of the men’s wages per hour.
Casual labourers as we saw earlier constitute about
29.1 % of the rural working population (which will work out to be around 773,00,000 persons amounting to 8% of the total Indian
population). They thus represent a large segment of Indian population once we
add their household dependents.
It is rather difficult to calculate the earnings of
Casual Workers as we have to put together a number of tables to get at the
figures and we don’t really have all the necessary information. Casual workers’
earning depends upon the number of days they find employment and the rate of
daily wages prevailing in the season. To add to the complication, the PLFs points
to three parallel rural labour markets – the commercial rate, the general
public works rate and MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act) rate. The daily wage rate in each of these categories of work
varies and varies with the season too. However, we do not know how many days
work an average casual worker gets in each of these categories and as such will
have to depend upon some averaging and approximation to figure out how much an
average casual worker may actually earn in a month.
The range of variation between the three rural casual
labour markets is of some significance. The following table summarises the
issue (Table 8).
| Table 8. Variation indailly wage rate in Rupees |
||||||||
| Male |
Female |
|||||||
| Season |
Commercial |
Public works |
MNREGA |
Average |
Commercial | Public works | MNREGA | Average |
| July-Sept |
253 |
158 |
41 |
184 |
166 |
142 |
135 |
148 |
| Oct.-Dec |
265 |
161 |
157 |
194 |
172 |
144 |
138 |
151 |
| Jan-Mar |
270 |
171 |
152 |
198 |
175 |
134 |
165 |
158 |
| Apr-June |
282 |
142 |
138 |
187 |
179 |
119 |
131 |
143 |
| Table 43, 44 of PLFS Report |
||||||||
A cursory look at this table will show that the public
works rates are about 60% of the commercial market rates. While the MNREGA
rates are still lower, one can understand their being pegged lower due to its
being a minimum guarantee welfare scheme. This cannot be said of public works
done for the government projects like road building. Pegging them far below the
market rate clearly indicates that the state actually engages in fleecing the
rural casual workers. But there is more to it.
Just
when market rates in the countryside is the highest in the summer, the public
works and the MNREGA depresses the wages unnaturally, to depress the overall
wage levels to the benefit of the rural kulaks. In these months the public work
rates are half the market rates. This indicates a sordid connivance between the
state bureaucracy and the rural capitalists to the disadvantage of the rural
proletarians.
We
add in passing that contrary to principles of equal pay for equal work mandated
for the state and for the MNREGA, their daily wage rates are much lower for
women as compared to men. Let us now return to the earnings of casual workers.
What strikes one is the way the average hourly rate is
maintained through the year. The Public Works and the Employment Guarantee
scheme appear to be assisting in keeping the wage rates constant by depressing
wages in high demand seasons. This also appears to close the gender gap in
hourly wage rates. This hypotheses needs to be further investigated and checked
by field studies.
What is of importance is the stark contrast this
presents to the earnings of the regular salaried / wage earners. Casual workers
are paid less than half the hourly rate of the regular wage earners and more
important the latter being employed for longer time, end up earning about three
times more in a month.
| Table 9. Average number of days worked by Casual workers and EstimatedMonthly Earnings by season |
|||||||||||||
| Male |
Female |
||||||||||||
| Season |
Days per week |
Hours per week |
Average wage rate per day in Rs. |
Earnings per month in Rs. |
Average per Hour Rate in Rs. |
Days per week |
Hours per week |
Average wage rate per day in Rs. |
Earnings per month in Rs. |
Average per Hour Rate in Rs. |
|||
| July-Sept | 5.8 |
46.4 |
184 |
4269 |
23 |
5.2 |
39 |
148 |
3078 |
20 |
|||
| Oct.-Dec | 5.7 |
45.8 |
194 |
4423 |
24 |
5.3 |
39.2 |
151 |
3201 |
20 |
|||
| Jan-Mar | 5.6 |
45.3 |
198 |
4435 |
24 |
5 |
37.3 |
158 | 3160 |
21 |
|||
| Apr-June |
5.5 |
44.2 |
187 |
4114 |
23 |
5 |
37.7 |
143 | 2860 |
9 |
|||
| Table 9 is an extrapolation based on Tables 43 and 44 of the PLFS report |
|||||||||||||
We shall now turn to the most complex segment of all,
the ‘self employed’ workers. This omnibus category includes the peasant farmers
(who should be the bulk of the ‘own account’ self employed who don’t hire in
labour), capitalist farmers who hire agricultural labourers, small shopkeepers,
petty artisans, repair shop operators, etc. These constitute 58% of the rural
workforce, with men dominating the profile. To recall the information from
Table 2, the own account workers constitute about 41% of rural workforce and
helpers in the same category constitute about 17%. Unfortunately, the report
does not give us any break up of the earnings of the
two categories, assuming that the ‘helpers’ are largely unpaid. Two points
strike us strongly on eva cursory reading of the table below.
| Table 10. Monthly Gross Earnings of Rural Self Employed workers
|
||
| Male |
Female |
|
| Jul-Sept | 8493 | 4342 |
| Oct-Dec | 8807 | 4104 |
| Jan-Mar | 8864 | 4121 |
| Apr-Jun | 9657 | 3291 |
| Average | 8955 | 3965 |
| Table 45, PLFS | ||
The earnings of the self employed varies between
seasons and the earnings of women are one third to half that of the men. Both
these are to be expected given the seasonality of agriculture and also the
total control of male patriarchs over the household modes of production. The
earnings are termed ‘gross’ in that they include both ‘profit and wages’. The
profit ought to accrue to the capital investment in the form of land, equipment
and animals. Also these are income of the entire family and not of individuals
as in the case of regular salaried or casual wage workers. The average monthly
income projection of about Rs. 9000 for men and Rs. 4000 for women is only marginally better than the
earnings of the casual workers. That our peasants have been earning pitifully
little from their farming is pretty well known and if we take this gross
earning as any indication, it falls far short of decent living requirements.
The PLFS and related reports of NSSO surveys leave no
doubt as to the predominantly rural and male character of Indian labouring
force. The rural labour force constitutes about 72% of the total labour force
of India (about 29 million of 41 million). Likewise, men constitute 78% of the
total labour force. These two features of the Indian Labour Force have immense
implications for the democratic and working class movements. Agrarian distress
among working peasants and unemployment, precarity
and low wage employment pose a formidable task of organising the rural
proletariat and forging an alliance with the distressed poor peasants.
If our interpretation of the PLFS categories is
tenable, i.e., the ‘own- account self-employed’ in the rural context being
predominantly peasants and traditional artisans, then about 41% of the rural
workforce can be termed as peasants and artisans and another 17% of the
workforce paid and unpaid workers associated with them. That constitutes the
majority of rural workforce and also more than 41% of the entire national workforce.
The rural proletariat is in all probability covered
under the category of ‘casual labour’ constituting 29% of the rural workforce
and 21% of the entire workforce of the country. While the peasant distress has
found much expression in the form of marches and press coverage of farm crises,
the rural proletariat has largely remained unorganised and unrepresented.
The fact of women not being visible in the labour
force data of course does not imply that they are mere ‘consumers’ not engaged
in any productive work. The fact remains that women continue to share unequal
burden of physical labour; the problem is in the definition of labour which
excludes most reproductive work done at the household whose burden is
particularly higher in situations with limited socialisation of work as in the
rural peasant economy. While recognising this contribution of women to the
economy, the fact remains that in being kept out of production of exchange
values women are denied opportunities of breaking out of domestic drudgery and
engaging in new ways of life. What has been of concern is not only the fact
that female participation in ‘work’ has been low but that it has been declining
steadily over decades. This can be explained as the assertion of patriarchy
which seeks to keep the newly emerging market oriented employment as a preserve
of men and edge women out. The confinement of women to household work has an
implication for the economy as a whole as it really means that the household
sector (itself a non-capitalist unit of production) is forced to subsidise the
labour of men in the capitalist market. Some of these issues have been
discussed at length by feminists, but much empirical study remains to be done.
What is of deep concern is the steady and drastic
decline in the participation of rural women in the labour force from 33% of all
rural women in 1993-94 to 18% in 2017-18. Of these women in the labour force
nearly 38% are engaged as unpaid helpers in Self-employment units and 32% are
casual workers. This gives the kind of profile of working women in the
countryside – mainly engaged in unpaid and unskilled work. At the same time, it
is noteworthy that the percentage of labouring rural women engaged in regular
salaried jobs has increased significantly from about 3% in 1993-94 to 10.5% in
2017-18. This is the only heartening factor in the otherwise bleak picture.
It is important to note that while more and more women
are indeed seeking work, there is a shortage of employment opportunities to
absorb them. The unemployment rate among women (by current weekly status) has
increased from 3% to 8% between 2011 and 2018. Indeed, unemployment among
educated women (secondary and graduation) is extremely high, about 17.3%. The
Modi government has much to answer for this alarming rise in unemployment among
the educated youth.
Some of these special issues relating to women in the
rural sector need to be flagged and have to be taken up seriously for both
organising the women and also raising demands and framing programs for
facilitating greater participation of women in the labour force and also enable
access to employment with dignity of labour and higher remuneration.
We had the opportunity to look into the working hours
of the self employed, the salaried workers and the casual workers and also
their remuneration/earnings. The ‘informal’ setting of the work which
essentially denies the workers any social protection and does not even
recognise them as workers calls for innovative strategies for mobilisation,
organisation and raising meaningful demands.
1. Periodic Labour Force Survey, Annual Report, (July
2017 to June 2018), New Delhi, May 2019
2. State of Working India, 2019. Azim Premji University, Bengaluru 2019. This report is even more
damning as it traces the present downturn in employment to the twin projects of
Modi of demonetisation and GST. “Five million men lost their jobs between 2016
and 2018, the beginning of the decline in jobs coinciding with demonetisation
in November 2016” (p. 21). This report mainly focuses on urban employment
issues.
3. Nutritional Intake in India, NSSO Report no.
560, 68*^ Round New Delhi 2014.
4. Health in India, NSSO Report no. 564, 71st
Round, New Delhi 2016.
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