A ‘duet’ for India’s urban women - Decentralised Urban Employment and Training
iasparliament
December 08, 2020
What is the issue?
Public works could provide valuable support to the urban poor, especially if women get most of the jobs.
In this regard, here is a look at a suggestion called the DUET (Decentralised Urban Employment and Training) scheme.
What is the need for social protection in urban areas?
The COVID-19 crisis has drawn attention to the insecurities that haunt the lives of the urban poor.
Generally, they are less insecure than the rural poor, partly because fallback work is easier to find in urban areas.
Nevertheless, the urban poor are exposed to serious contingencies.
These include both at individual (such as illness and underemployment) and collective (lockdowns, floods, cyclones, financial crises and so on) levels.
There is, thus, a need for better social protection in urban areas.
What are the possible options?
Universalising the Public Distribution System in urban slums would be a step forward, and it can be done under the National Food Security Act.
But foodgrain rations do not take people very far.
Employment-based support is one way of doing more.
It has two major advantages: self-targeting, and the possibility of generating valuable assets or services.
There has been much discussion, in recent months, of a possible urban employment guarantee act.
The specifics of the act, however, are not so clear, and there is little experience of relief work in urban areas.
The Decentralised Urban Employment and Training (DUET) is a proposal in this regard.
How does DUET work?
The government, State or Union, would issue “job stamps”, each standing for one day of work at the minimum wage.
The job stamps would be liberally distributed to approved public institutions.
These may include educational institutions, hospitals, museums, shelters, jails, offices, transport corporations, public-sector enterprises, neighbourhood associations, urban local bodies, etc.
These institutions would be free to use the stamps to hire labour for odd jobs and small projects that do not fit easily within their existing budgets and systems.
The “service voucher” schemes popular in some European countries works the same way.
But the difference is that they are used by households instead of public institutions, for the purpose of securing domestic services.
The service vouchers are not free, but they are highly subsidised, and households have an incentive to use them.
Wages, paid by the government, would go directly to the workers’ accounts against job stamps certified by the employer.
To avoid collusion, an independent placement agency would take charge of assigning workers to employers.
What are the advantages?
The DUET approach would help in -
activating a multiplicity of potential employers
avoiding the need for special staff
facilitating productive work, among others
It would also ensure that workers have a secure entitlement to minimum wages, and possibly other benefits.
Notably, there is no dearth of possible DUET jobs. Many states have a chronic problem of dismal maintenance of public premises.
To work well, DUET would have to include some skilled workers (masons, carpenters, electricians and such).
That would widen the range of possible jobs.
It would also help impart a training component - workers could learn skills “on the job” as they work alongside skilled workers.
How about giving priority to women workers?
This should not be like a minimum quota for women. Instead, as long as women workers are available, they should get all the work.
In fact, women could also run the placement agencies, or the entire programme for that matter.
To facilitate women’s involvement, most of the work could be organised on a part-time basis, say four hours a day.
A part-time employment option would be attractive for many poor women in urban areas.
It would give them some economic independence and bargaining power within the family, and help them to acquire new skills.
Giving priority to women would have two further merits.
First, it would reinforce the self-targeting feature of DUET.
This is because women in relatively well-off households are unlikely to go (or be allowed to go) for casual labour at the minimum wage.
Second, it would promote women’s general participation in the labour force.
India has one of the lowest rates of female workforce participation in the world.
According to 2019 National Sample Survey data, only 20% of urban women in the age group of 15-59 years spend time in “employment and related activities” on an average day.
This stifles the productive and creative potential of almost half of the adult population of the country.
What are the challenges?
How far will the public institutions concerned make active use of the job stamps is a big question.
In the DUET scheme, the use of job stamps relies on a sense of responsibility among the heads of public institutions, not their self-interest.
It is, thus, not easy to guess how intensively job stamps will be used.
The best way to find out is to give the scheme a chance, may be by way of a pilot scheme in select districts or even municipalities.
