By Dr. Gyan Pathak
The recently held Annual Development Partners meeting of the ILO’s Global Flagship Programme on Building Social Protection Floors for all has reiterated that the human right to social security is still not a reality for more than 4 billion people of the world who are left totally unprotected without access to any social protection benefit.
During the review of the progress in the first two years (2021 and 2022) of the second phase of this flagship programme, it was noted that there remained a resource gap of USD 53.6 million which was needed to achieve the target of this programme by 2025.
The development partners noted significant progress made globally by the flagship ILO programme launched in 2016. It said that 25 million people have benefited from improved access to social protection in the last two years, which were actually the first two years of the second phase of the programme that runs between 2021 and 2025.
In 2021 and 2022, the programme worked in 50 countries and territories including India, playing a role in 56 institutional changes that brought measurable improvements in social protection for 30 million people. These changes included the adoption of national social protection strategies, the design and adoption of individual social protection programmes, and the implementation of improvements in governance and operations of social protection systems.
The second phase of this programme aims to extend and improve social protection coverage, access and adequacy levels for 60 million people in 50 focus countries, providing on-demand “cross country” policy advice in 16 thematic areas including strengthening financial governance, digitizing administrative systems and leveraging social protection system in the fight against climate change.
Since India is a priority partner for this programme, the review has a specific significance for this country. It is a matter of serious concern for India that the recent World Social Protection Report of 2020-22, has said that only 24.4 per cent people are covered under at least one social protection scheme in India, over 75.6 per cent of people are just unprotected in this largest populated country of the world having a population of around 1.42 billion. It goes without saying that over 25 per cent of the unprotected people of the world are living in India.
According to the report only 24.1 per cent children were covered under social security while coverage for mothers with newborns was 41.5 per cent, persons with disabilities 5.6 per cent, unemployed 0.0 per cent, older persons 42.5 per cent, workers for work injuries 3.7 per cent, vulnerable persons with social assistance 16.4 per cent, pension coverage for active contributors 31.5 per cent, and universal health coverage 55 per cent.
ILO has said under this flagship programme that life without social protection means children people cannot access the healthcare services they need, children have to work to help their parents, women have to go back to work the day after delivering their babies, frail older persons have to work until they die, and persons with disabilities have no income of their own.
As India commits to the progressive universalization of the social security coverage through the Social Security Code 2020, it is faced with the challenges of catering to a very large population with central-state structure and increase of informality (close to 90 per cent of workforce is informal). To address this problem, India has launched a new e-registration system (e-Shram), however, progress is slow and inefficient. Moreover, there is no programme to give complete social coverage to informal workers.
The Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Corporation and Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) provided social security coverage to only formal workers and that too at certain sizable establishments. The ESI Scheme covers a little more than 132 million beneficiaries across all states of India with 6 types of benefits including health protection, unemployment insurance, sickness benefits, etc. The EPFO mainly focusing on providing income protection for old-ages covers 252 million beneficiaries instituting provident funds, pension fund and deposit linked insurance fund for employees working in factories and other establishments. Moreover, social security coverage is not enough.
Under the DWCP 2023-27 strategic priority 3, ILO constituents in India have agreed to “Promote and strengthen institutions to enable all workers, especially those who are marginalized and vulnerable, to improve their employment outcomes and progressively achieve universal social protection”.
Nevertheless, there are huge coverage and resource gaps in India in the present social security schemes apart from lack of any proper policy and action plan for providing complete social security coverage to its people.
There is no right to work in India. The only employment guarantee given under NREGA is for rural areas. Moreover, MGNREGA workers are legally entitled for only 100-days work against which they get an average of only 47 days at minimum wage even lower than the other rural workforce. High price and inflation coupled with joblessness and lack of social protection has made the life of Indian workforce miserable. (IPA Service)
The post Workers Unable To Live A Life Of Dignity Without Social Security first appeared on IPA Newspack.
