Industrial Labour in Post-Colonial India. II: Employment in the Informal-Sector Economy

Abstract

Rural–urban migration, which started long before Independence, has accelerated during the last half century. Only a small minority of that army of migrants has found work in the formal sector of the economy, however. The greater part of the urban population, both long-established and newcomers, are excluded from such employment. How, then, has this gradually increasing mass of people managed to earn a living? The answer is with work of very diverse character which provides very little stability taken over the year, even if continuous and full-time. The categorization of informal-sector employment is largely determined by the image evoked by Hart on launching the concept. Hart's description stressed the colourful cavalcade of petty trades and crafts that can be encountered while walking the streets of Third-World cities, including those of India: hawkers, rag-and-bone men, shoe cleaners, tinkers, tailors, market vendors, bearers and porters, drink sellers, barbers, refuse collectors, beggars, whores and pimps, pickpockets and other small-time crooks. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, registration of this repertoire of work expanded enormously. A noticeable factor is that publications on the subject did not originate among conventional researchers into labour, who were interested mainly in formal-sector employment. The contents of leading professional journals, such as The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations and The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, show that, for the time being, that one-sided interest did not change.