When Home-Based Workers Raise Their Voices: An Indian Perspective

The re-emergence of interest in informal-sector issues worldwide has created an environment within which attention can be directed more effectively to the informal economy in developing countries, and to the "new" as well as the "traditional" types of employment (and insecurity) that characterize this work. Developed countries' renewed concern with informality, probably itself a consequence of their own changing economic structure, has generated new thinking and new data-collection methodologies that can be adapted to study informal workers in very different situations and nations.

At the international level, after years of negotiations the International Conference of Labor Statisticians (ICLS) adopted a workable definition of the informal sector in 1993 that has been incorporated into the new System of National Accounts (SNA). The SNA characterizes the informal sector as consisting of units engaged in the production of goods or services with the primary objective of generating employment and incomes for the persons involved. As unincorporated enterprises owned by households, such units form part of the household sector. They are distinguished from corporations and quasi-corporations by their legal status and the type of accounts they hold. These household enterprises do not have any legal status independent of the households or household members owning them. The ICLS definition does not specify the kind of workplace, the extent of fixed assets, the longevity of such enterprises, or whether their operation is a main or secondary activity for the people involved.

With the adoption of the 1993 ICLS definition, it has now become imperative for all countries to collect data for incorporating the contribution of the informal sector into national accounts. Finding out how to do so is the task of a newly formed group of international experts on informal-sector statistics called the Delhi Group. It deliberates on how countries can best adopt the international definition in their statistical system. The global network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), comprised of representatives from activist, academic, and international development institutions, has pointed out that the 1993 ICLS definition excludes certain categories of informal workers, notably casual workers and subcontract workers. WIEGO has led the way towards suggesting more inclusive and realistic categories of employment through the Delhi Group, including workers performing outsourced industrial jobs, "homeworkers," and workers precariously employed in the formal sector.

This paper seeks to draw attention to the size and contribution of the informal economy in South Asia, and India in particular, and to the emergence of new forms of "voice" among organized groups of home-based workers, which attempt to improve the terms of engagement in the domestic and global market economies. The formal and informal sectors or the degree of informality of a worker can be visualized as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Organization and representation provide a "voice" to the workers that can help them increase their degree of formality, especially in terms of social security benefits. This new form of "voice" is represented by WIEGO and HomeNet, an international alliance of organizations of home-based workers, both self-employed and subcontract workers. Although founded only in 1994, HomeNet has already established regional networks in Southeast and South Asia.

Measuring the Informal Sector

The predominance of agriculture in South Asia has been used to explain the large informal sector in the region. However, the sub-continent's urban informal sector is also significant. In India, it is estimated that 91 percent of women and 70 percent of men in the non-agricultural labor force work in the informal sector. ¹ The urban informal sector is quite diverse. At one end are high-income, high-skill workers who choose to opt out of formal employment contracts. At the other end lies the majority: low-paid workers, including some who are highly skilled but lack bargaining power, and some who are unskilled and have few alternatives and little employability. Women tend to be...