Economic Survey 2020-21: Vol 2 Ch 10: Social Infrastructure, Employment and Human Development

• The COVID-19 has brought into focus the vulnerabilities of societies, states, and countries in facing a pandemic.
• The lockdown had an inevitable impact on the vulnerable and informal sector, the education system, and the economy as a whole.
• The Government announced the first relief package of Rs.1.70 lakh crores under ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY)’ in March 2020 and a comprehensive stimulus cum relief package of Rs.20 lakh crore under ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ in May 2020.
• Development and welfare schemes being implemented by the Government over the years together with these relief measures enabled the country to endure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and led to a V-shaped economic recovery.

• The expenditure on social services (education, health, and other social sectors) by Centre and States combined as a proportion of GDP increased from 6.2 to 8.8% during the period 2014-15 to 2020-21 (BE).
• This increase was witnessed across all social sectors.
• For education, it increased from 2.8% to 3.5% and for health, from 1.2% to 1.5% during the same period.
• Under the 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' package, provision for Rs.4.31 lakh crore made for the social sector includes PMGKY and PMGKY Anna Yojana, housing, and health (including R & D Grant for COVID-19 Suraksha), EPF support to worker & employers, street vendors, MGNREGS workers, and ABRY, etc.

• India’s rank in Human Development Index (HDI) was 131 in 2019, compared to 129 in 2018, out of a total of 189 countries according to UNDP Human Development Report, 2020.
• It may be mentioned that the decline in HDI ranking by two points in 2019 as compared to 2018 is relative to other countries.
• By looking at the sub-component wise performance of HDI indicators, India's ‘GNI per capita (2017 PPP $)’ has increased from US$ 6,427 in 2018 to US$ 6,681 in 2019, and ‘life expectancy at birth’ has improved from 69.4 years in 2018 to 69.7 years in 2019, respectively.
• However, considering the value of Planetary pressures adjusted HDI (PHDI), India was positioned 8 ranks better than HDI rank.
• If a country puts no pressure on the planet, its PHDI and HDI would be equal, but the PHDI falls below the HDI as pressure rises.
• PHDI values are very close to HDI values for countries with an HDI value of 0.7 or lower.
• The value of HDI for India has increased from 0.579 in 2010 to 0.645 in 2019.
• Cross country comparison of average annual HDI growth shows India is ahead of BRICS countries.
• To sustain this momentum, and overcome possible fallouts of COVID-19 on human development, the thrust on access to social services such as education and health is critical.
   Average Annual HDI Growth Rate (%), 2010-2019
  Trends in India’s HDI Value and its Sub-components

• India will have the highest population of young people in the world over the next decade.
• So, our ability to provide high-quality educational opportunities to them will determine the future of our country (National Education Policy, 2020).
• As per U-DISE+ 2018-19, the physical infrastructure of more than 9.72 lakh government elementary schools has improved significantly.
• While India has attained a literacy level of almost 96%  at the elementary school level, it is still behind in achieving 100% literacy.
• As per National Sample Survey (NSS), the literacy rate of persons of age 7 years and above at the All India level stood at 77.7% but the differences in literacy rate attainment among social-religious groups, as well as gender, persists.
• Female literacy remained below the national average among social groups of SC, ST, OBC, including religious groups of Hinduism and Islam.
• Children in the age-group of 6-13 years have reported almost 95% and above attendance across States.
• But the attendance rate in early childhood education, which the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 emphasizes on is low and diverging irrespective of the achievement in education status of the States concerned.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on School Education

• Since March 2020, most of the schools are closed due to the COVID-19 induced restrictions, and children are taught online from their homes using available assets at home.
• As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2020 Wave-1 (Rural), released in October 2020, the percentage of enrolled children from government and private schools owning a smartphone increased enormously.
• If utilized well, the resultant reduction in the digital divide between rural and urban, gender, age, and income groups is likely to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes.

• There is an improvement in the proportion of skilled people over the annual cycle of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) across rural, urban, and gender classification.
• However, the level of skill acquirement remained low, as only 2.4% of the workforce of age 15-59 years have received formal vocational/technical training and another 8.9% of the workforce received training through informal sources.
• Among those who received formal training, the most opted training course is IT-ITeS among both males and females, followed by electrical-power and electronics, mechanical engineering- capital goods- strategic manufacturing, automotive, office and business-related work for males while the other preferred courses of females were textile handloom-apparels, office & business-related work, healthcare & life sciences and work related to childcare-nutrition-pre-school & crèche.
  

  Policy Reforms under Skill Development Initiatives Operationalizing Unified Skill Regulator: A significant step to make the skill ecosystem more dynamic and credible has been undertaken through the operationalization of the unified skills regulator- National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET).  Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana 3.0 (PMKVY 3.0): The first phase of PMKVY 3.0 was rolled out in 2020-21 with a tentative target to skill 8 lakh candidates including migrants. A paradigm shift in implementation strategy is adopted by making it demand-driven with a bottom-up approach for identification and mapping of job roles. District Skill Committees (DSCs) would be playing a pivotal role under the guidance of State Skill Development Missions. Quality Enhancement: Towards enhancing the quality of long-term training programs and providing a choice to learners about the institutes, the grading of ITIs have been undertaken to improve their quality and transparency.  Integration of Vocational and Formal education both at school and higher education: The efforts towards integration of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in general education has received a big fillip with the NEP, 2020 envisioning giving 50% of school and higher education candidates exposure to VET over the next 5 years.

• Based on the results of PLFS, estimates in absolute numbers of the labor force, employed persons and unemployed persons have been derived for 2017-18 and 2018-19, separately for rural and urban sectors and males and females for all ages.
• The size of the labor force in 2018-19 was estimated at 51.8 crore persons: about 48.8 crores employed and 3.0 crore unemployed.
• The size of the labor force increased by about 0.85 crores between 2017-18 and 2018-19. 
• Industry-wise estimates on workforce show that the largest, about 21.5 crore persons are employed in 'Agriculture', which is still the largest employer with 42.5% of the workforce.
• Self-employment is still the major source of employment with close to 52% of the workforce was self-employed.
• The proportion of regular wage/salaried employees saw an increase in both rural & urban areas and for both males & females.

Unemployment 

• Unemployment rates at all Indian level, for all ages, as per usual status, declined marginally to 5.8% in 2018-19 from 6.1% in 2017-18.
• The decline in the unemployment rate is widespread across all the categories.
• The highest decline in unemployment rates is seen among those who have received formal vocational/ technical training. 
• The youth unemployment rates vary widely across states in India.
• The States like Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, and Bihar is on the high extreme while the States such as Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Sikkim are on the lower extremity. 
• It is quite visible that unemployment rates in urban are much higher than in the rural sector in most of the States/UTs.

Labour Reforms

• Years 2019 and 2020 are landmark years in the history of labor reforms, when the country saw the nearly 29 Central Labour laws being amalgamated, rationalized and simplified into four labor codes viz.:
  • The Code on Wages, 2019
  • The Industrial Relations Code, 2020
  • The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020
  • The Code on Social Security, 2020
• Thereby bringing these laws in tune with the changing labor market trends and at the same time accommodating the minimum wage requirement and welfare needs of the unorganized sector workers, including the self-employed and migrant workers, within the framework of legislation.

Changing Nature of Work: Gig and Platform Workers

• The nature of work has been changing with the change in technology, the evolution of new economic activities, innovation in organization structures, and evolving business models.
• Digital platforms have emerged as enablers for employment creation with the power to easily discover job seekers and job providers in the absence of middlemen.
• Apart from traditional forces, these new forces have created massive opportunities for the consumer and service provider to interact in innovative ways.
• Digital technology enables two-sided markets which saw the emergence of e-commerce and online retailing platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Ola, Uber, Urban Clap, Zomato, Swiggy, etc. India has emerged as one of the largest countries for flex staffing in the world. 
• During the period of COVID-19 induced lockdown, the increasing role of the gig economy was evident with significant growth of the online retail business.
• The lockdown period also saw employers preferring 'Work from home' of their employees, cutting down on staff strength and engaging freelancers or outsourcing tasks to reduce overhead costs as well as to hire skilled services. 
• As a result, the gig economy has been popular amongst the workers in India.
• The benefit of the gig economy is that it allows flexibility in the employer-employee relationship to both service seeker and service provider.
• The nature of a job contract for a gig worker is different from the contract between an employer and employee/worker.
• Their labor contract is usually shorter and more specific to the task or job assigned.
• Their employment type might be either temporary or contractual and certainly not regular.
• The nature of payment against the work is more of piece rate, negotiable, maybe as wage or partly as profit/reward than a fixed salary.
• The control over their work by employer varies in degree but any case is not full.
• The workers most of the time are flexible to decide on when to work, where to work etc.
• Till recently, gig or platform workers were devoid of their basic rights and social security protections mainly because they were neither considered as worker nor employee under the definition of employee in the labor laws of the country and were not entitled to legal protections under labor laws.
• For the first time, these classes of workers have been brought under the ambit of the newly-introduced Code on Social Security 2020 by defining them exclusively in the category of unorganized workers for providing social security benefits.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Labour Market

• COVID-19 has exposed the vulnerability of urban casual workers, who account for 11.2% of the urban workforce (All-India) as per PLFS, January-March, 2020, a significant proportion of them are supposed to be migrants who were impacted by the lockdown.
• With limited data available on inter-state migration and employment in informal sectors, it is difficult to figure the numbers of migrants who lost jobs and accommodation during the pandemic and returned home.
• The government of India has taken several initiatives for the welfare of workers during the pre-lockdown and lockdown period to mitigate the crisis.
  

  Programs and schemes to improve employment opportunities Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana (ABRY): ABRY, a component of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat 3.0, package announced in November 2020 has a total estimated outlay of Rs.22,810 crores for the scheme period i.e., up to wage month 31st May 2023. Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY): PMRPY was launched on 9th August 2016 to incentivize employers for the creation of new employment. Under the scheme, the Government of India was paying 8.33% of the employer EPS contribution for all sectors in respect of these new employees. The scheme targeted employees earning upto Rs. 15,000 per month and to cover a large number of informal workers to the formal workforce. Under Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP) financial assistance was given to building & other construction workers (BOCW) which largely included migrant workers from the funds collected under BOCW’s cess. Shramik Special Trains: The Indian Railways operated special trains as per the State Government’s request to facilitate migrant laborers/stranded passengers from 1st May 2020. These special trains facilitated about 63.19 lakh migrant workers to reach their destination between 1st May 2020 to 31st August 2020.

• LFPR of females in the productive age (15-59 years) was 26.5% in 2018-19, as compared to 80.3% for males (rural+urban).
• The NSO conducted Time Use Survey (TUS)on how males and females spend their time in rural and urban areas in various activities during a 24-hour time period.
• It is observed that time spent by a female on unpaid domestic services and unpaid caregiving services to household members is prominent and higher than male counterparts.
• Among unpaid caregiving services for household members, females spent disproportionately higher time on childcare and instruction as compared to males.
• Similarly, among unpaid domestic services for household members, females spent most of the time in food, meal management, and preparation.
• The unpaid domestic and caregiving services provided by women are not influenced by their level of education.
• Even with the education level of “secondary and above”, women spend 295 minutes in unpaid domestic services for household members and 146 minutes in unpaid caregiving services for household members.
• Women in the workforce shoulder the responsibility of domestic activities as well as paid work, which leaves them with less time to spend on employment-related activities.
• To incentivize more women to join the labor force, the following steps need to be taken:
  • Investment in institutional support to affordable and quality child care facilities
  • Paid paternal leave
  • Family-friendly work
  • Environment
  • Support for elderly care
  • Improve work incentives
  • Medical and social security benefits
  • Promote non-discriminatory practices at the workplace like pay and career progression.
    

Average Time (in minutes) Spent in a Day per Participant in Different Activities (15-59 age group)

• COVID-19 demonstrated the importance of investing and strengthening the public health system.
• India has made significant progress in improving its health outcomes over the last two decades by eliminating Polio, Guinea worm disease, Yaws, and maternal & neonatal Tetanus.
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has reduced sharply from 3.6 in 1991 to 2.2 in 2018.
• Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) was 113 per 1,00,000 live births for the period 2016- 2018 and the Under Five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 36 per 1000 live births in 2018.
• But in 2020, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that put to test the health infrastructure of India.
• The pandemic brought forth the inherent strengths of the medical fraternity in effectively managing the spread of the disease.
• There are more than 1 crore Covid-19 cases reported in India, with a recovery of more than 95%.
• However, the country lost around 1.52 lakh lives due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Public health measures were taken in a pre-emptive, pro-active, and graded manner based on the evolving scenario.

Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs): ASHAs played a key role in the country’s response for prevention and management of the COVID-19. During the pandemic, in addition to performing tasks related to COVID-19, they also continued to support community members for accessing essential health services such as ante-natal care, immunization, safe delivery, and treatment adherence for chronic illnesses. All ASHAs and ASHA facilitators were covered under the PMGKP insurance scheme.

Child health outcomes

• The cash incentives for institutional delivery of pregnant women and ASHAs under Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) and conditional cash transfer under Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) aims to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates.
• To address the problem of malnutrition in the country, Anganwadi Services, Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, and the Scheme for Adolescent Girls under the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS) are some targeted interventions of the Government.
• PM Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition (POSHAN) Abhiyan was launched on 8th March 2018 to address the problem of malnutrition in a mission-mode.

Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G) 

• Under SBM-G, rural sanitation coverage has made an incredible leap in the target achievement from 39% in 2014 to 100% in 2019 with more than 10 crore toilets built since 2014.
• UNICEF study on ‘Access to Toilets and Safety, Convenience and Self-respect of Women in Rural India’, states that 91% of the women reported that they have been able to save upto an hour and do not have to travel up to a kilometer for defecation after the construction of toilets.
• Phase-II of SBM(G) from 2020-21 to 2024-25 is being implemented focusing on Open Defecation Free (ODF) sustainability and Solid & Liquid Waste Management (SLWM) through convergence between different verticals of financing and various schemes of Central and State Governments such as 15th Finance Commission grants to local bodies, MGNREGS, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds, etc.

• The rural sector in India witnessed the phenomenon of reverse migration during the period of complete lockdown, with migrants availing all possible means of transport or even walking back kilometers to reach homes.
• But the eventual return of these migrants back to metropolitan cities would materialize only with the normalization of COVID-19 related stringencies.
• Despite such adversities, the resilience of the rural economy in tackling the COVID -19 related crisis was supported by a good crop season and stimulus packages of the Government.

Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM)

• DAY-NRLM seeks to alleviate rural poverty by building sustainable community institutions for the poor.
• The mission aims at mobilizing about 9-10 crore households into SHGs and link them to 'sustainable livelihood opportunities by building their skills and enabling them to access formal sources of finance, entitlements, and services from both public and private sectors.
• DAY-NRLM has also been instrumental in providing the last-mile delivery of financial services in remote rural areas through the promotion of digital finance and deployment of SHG Women as Banking Correspondent Sakhi (BC Sakhi), with the support of banks and Common Service Centres. 

Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY)

• PMGSY was launched on 25th December 2000 to provide single all-weather road connectivity to all eligible unconnected habitations of the designated population size (500+ in plain areas, 250+ in North-Eastern and the Himalayan States) in rural areas of the country.
• More than 6.44 lakh km road length has been constructed so far under the Scheme.
• The scheme has helped immensely in providing access to basic services and lifting the income of rural masses. 

Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA)

• The major objectives of the initiative include the provision of livelihood opportunities to returning migrants and similarly affected rural citizens, saturate villages with public infrastructure.
• The program was intended to enhance long term livelihood opportunities. To address the hardship of a large number of returnee migrant workers, the district with a concentration of 25,000 and more returnee migrant workers were selected. 

• Investment in social infrastructure played a crucial role in India’s economic growth.
• The government is committed to investing in the social sector viz education, healthcare, skill development, providing employment opportunities, housing, sanitation, etc to bring overall improvement in socio-economic indicators and achieving SDGs.
• Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, public spending on the social sector has increased in 2020-21 and efforts continued through Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana, higher allocation under MGNREGS, Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyan, and path-breaking labor reforms, etc.
• India’s progress towards a vibrant economy is deep-seated in investing in social capital.

• An informal economy (informal sector or grey economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government.
• Human development is defined as the process of enlarging people's freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. It is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live. The human development concept was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq.
• The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and have a decent standard of living. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita.
• The Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index (PHDI) is an experimental index that adjusts the Human Development Index (HDI) for planetary pressures in the Anthropocene. The PHDI is the level of human development adjusted by carbon dioxide emissions per person (production-based) and material footprint per capita to account for the excessive human pressure on the planet.
• Skill development is the process of (1) identifying your skill gaps, and (2) developing and honing these skills. It is important because skills determine the ability to execute plans with success.
• Vocational education is education that prepares students for work in a specific trade, a craft, as a technician, or professional vocations such as engineering, accountancy, nursing, medicine, architecture, or the law.
• The labor force is the number of people who are employed plus the unemployed who are looking for work.
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• The labor force participation rate is a measure of an economy’s active workforce. The formula is the labor force divided by the working-age population.
• The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed people divided by the number of people in the labor force.
• A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organizations hire independent workers for short-term commitments.
• The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to the age-specific fertility rates for that area and time period. Without immigration, population size declines when the TFR is less than 2.1 children born per woman.
• Maternal mortality ratio (MMR): The number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live birth.