Adapting Social Security to 21st Century Indian Economy: A Case for Universalisation

Proliferation of social security has been one of the integral features of the modern industrialised world. In India too, social security has not only been enshrined as a constitutional mandate, but has also been embodied in a wide variety of legislation. Yet, multiplicity of legislation has created errors of harmonisation and engendered a regime riddled with variance in legal standards and rights of workers. Along with these inconsistencies and gaps, the centrality of the status of employment in extant regimes has excluded a large number of workers who fall through the crack. Such exclusion has been exacerbated by the occupation-centricity of these schemes that is ill-suited to the ongoing transformation in the labour economy and demographic changes. In view of these shortcomings, a shift to universal citizenship-based social security schemes is advocated. Delinking social security from occupation and predicating it on citizenship would extend these schemes to informal atypical workers and persons out of work and thereby make the constitutional right of social security a substantive entitlement for our citizenry.