Main Article Content
Abstract
The anatomy of Indian economy is often described in terms of a vector of sectors: Private Sector, Joint Sector, Core Sector, Worker’s Sector and Tiny Sector so on and so forth. To this list, now we add one more the Informal Sector. The ‘Informal Sector’ is a respectable designation used by the economists who have their own ways of covering up urban poverty by inventing rather neutral phraseology. The informal sector plays a major role in Indian economy and begins to dominate in providing gainful employment opportunity and livelihood to millions of people. It is contributing a significant share in the nation’s output. It is estimated that two-fifths of India’s gross domestic product is generated from the informal sector and 90 per cent of the families are depending on this sector directly and indirectly for their survival. It is well known that informal sector is a vital segment of the economy in the urban areas of the developing countries. The informal sector includes the self-employed people like the hawkers, fish and meat seller, the cobbler, the shoe shiner, the barber, the construction worker, the mechanic at a repair shop, the rickshaw driver, vegetable, fruits vendors and so on. These self-employed people do not have regular flow of income, holidays, fixed working or job specification, social security, dearness allowances, bonus, uniforms or even the right to strike for their rights. Therefore, an attempt is made in this paper to analyze the nature of informal units, problems, characteristics and various security schemes for informal sector workers in India.