With the Left breathing down its neck, the United Progressive Alliance government perhaps has little alternative but to appear as a force committed to social welfare. Consequently, at regular intervals, it announces policies that are aimed at helping the people, such as employment for one hundred days in the rural areas, ban on child labour and so on. The latest in the series of such policies is the decision to provide workers in the unorganized sector with social security.

No one can question the wisdom behind these measures. Unfortunately, many of these plans are not entirely foolproof. The ban on child labour, for instance, cannot be enforced in a poverty-ridden society such as ours. As for a hundred days’ employment a year, the scheme, by all accounts, has already run into rough weather. In any case, the plan is to implement it in certain select districts and not the country as a whole . But even that seems to be unlikely .

The draft of the legislation, to be introduced in the monsoon session of parliament, states that there are 40 crore workers in this particular sector, and the idea is to provide them with some kind of insurance and old-age benefits. The details of the draft are to be worked out by a national advisory body that will be created. One thing, however, has been made clear: the eligible worker must be over 18 years of age and he and his employer will have to make a monthly contribution to a special fund to finance the scheme.

Sweet nothings

And therein lies the rub. It is very similar to the provident fund in the organized sector, which suffers constantly due to the lack of contributions from employers. This has been a long-standing problem. Erring employers are at times taken to task but the problem remains because filching is in the blood of many employers. The organized sector has not been able to work out a solution to this problem. The unorganized sector too would fail in this respect as there are fewer checks here. The proposed advisory body will only formulate policies. It cannot be expected to act as a policeman.

Who will finance the scheme and what will be its cost? One estimate has pegged the annual cost at Rs 34,000 crore. If the Centre alone has to bear it, then the finance minister, P. Chidambaram, would surely throw up his hands in despair. If the states are asked to share a part of the burden, they will plead their inability to do so because of the paucity of funds.

There are other problems as well. The draft legislation proposes to take care of workers health needs and provide financial assistance in case of accidents. But the question that needs to be asked is whether each worker will be able to dole out Rs 50 every month. Fifty rupees is a princely sum for the poor. Can their wages permit this additional expense? And, if there is no employer, the worker will have to pay his share as well, the total coming to Rs 100. In that case, the individual should be considered as a self-employed person and not a ‘worker’ per se. Moreover, there is also the need to define the term, unorganized sector, more clearly.

The legislation, when introduced, may provide an answer to all these questions. But that is not the point. In a grossly unequal society, the idea of social security for the unorganized sector is a bit rich. In the post liberalization era, the worker is being increasingly perceived as one who makes unjust demands and this particular government at the Centre cannot deny that it shares this perception as well. In an essentially agrarian country, workers in the unorganized sector do not constitute a definite vote bank. Thus, at the cost of being dubbed a cynic, one has to say that the government’s present concern about workers is more a case of playing to the gallery than anything else. The gallery manned by the Left that is.