In the recent years, India’s urban employment landscape has witnessed a new entrant in the form of Urban Employment Programmes (UEPs), currently implemented across nine Indian states. The latest offering – Rajasthan’s Indira Gandhi Rozgar Yojna (IRGY) – was launched in 2022 with an ambitious Rs 800-crore budget, to address issues of urban poverty, inflation and joblessness.
The scale of these problems is large, and gendered. India’s unemployment rate remains around 8-9%, yet the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) reveals that only 21.9% of women aged 15 and above in urban areas participate in the workforce, with a significant 91% employed in the informal sector.
In UEPs across India, reports note the predominance of women workers, and our research in Rajasthan suggests that over 90% of IRGY beneficiaries are women. These metrics indicate a positive movement towards gender inclusivity and empowerment. A review of UEPs across India and insights from the field in Rajasthan and Odisha help us understand what draws women to these programmes and identify best practices and learnings that can lead to a sustained increase female labour force participation.
Social contexts and household dynamics are key determinants for lower female labour force participation. UEPs provides many women a pathway to enter the labour market, hitherto unavailable due to limited employment opportunities, unpaid care responsibilities, and other limitations placed by households, such as distance to work, work timings, and the concerns about safety outside the home and neighbourhood.
UEPs address these issues by offering a structured and supportive environment for women to enter the formal labour market. For informal workers such as home-based workers, UEPs substitute exploitative labour and wages (often as low as Rs. 50 a day) with a guaranteed minimum wage. Domestic workers benefit from a single worksite, reducing time and cost spent on commuting, and facilitating better management of household tasks. Similarly, casual workers, such as those in construction, find UEPs safer and easier to access, even if wages may be slightly lower.
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UEPs also offer a sense of safety for women, as many reported feeling safer due to the presence of other woman at the worksite. Women also found camaraderie and built stronger social networks at worksites. Ironically, these workspaces became unexpected spaces of leisure granting women a break from relentless household responsibilities. This support extended beyond the workday, with women forging friendships that helped navigate personal lives and crises. The programme also granted women a degree of autonomy by empowering them with financial resources and a role in household decision-making.
However, it is not just social contexts that make UEPs attractive. Informal work is layered with precarities, one of which is the task of finding work frequently. UEPs guarantee work (up to 125 days in Rajasthan) and often back this promise with unemployment allowances. UEPs also offer multiple avenues for workers to register for work, including camps organised by Urban Local Bodies and Civil Society Organisations, online registration, and support centres like e-mitra. The diversity of options and quick enrolment significantly reduce the barriers to entry that women face when applying for other jobs.
However, despite these benefits, UEPs, face criticism for offering lower-than-market wages, and for excessive focus on manual labour and for the quality of employment. Considering these strengths and weaknesses, we recommend several improvements for UEPs to elevate female labour force participation.
Broaden Eligibility: Access to UEPs in India are mostly restricted to residents. Not only does this leave out migrant women, who are often more vulnerable, but also long-term residents who may be considered migrants ‘on paper’ and unable to meet the eligibility criteria, enforced through requirements such as Aadhaar, ration cards, or voter ID cards. UEPs must consider non-local identification, such as Aadhaar, and ID cards generated through worker organisations or unions.
Offer Flexible Work Options: Recognising the burden of household work, UEPs can offer flexible work options, allowing women to choose shorter daily shifts of three to four hours, or condensed workweeks of two to three days. Similar employment programmes in South Africa and Argentina have offered such options. Argentina’s Plan Jefes has been effective, with nearly 70% of beneficiaries being women. Studies show improved access to social services, reduced school dropout rates, and lower levels of abuse and crime. Women also report gaining additional skills, improving their chances of obtaining other paid work.
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Expand the Scope of Work: UEPs must target an expanded list of work, such as building and managing economic and social infrastructure, which can include childcare facilities (creches), canteens, and multi-purpose centres (MPCCs) where women can collectivise, work, and rest. Women can also be granted work in community kitchens, and educational institutions, as well as public institutions such as Anganwaadis.
Improve Accessibility and Mobility: UEPs should provide work closer to home and within a 1-2 km radius to minimise transit time and cost. Alternatively, a transportation allowance (as practiced in Kerala) or free-to-use public transport can benefit women workers and enhance their mobility.
Prioritise Safety and Comfort: Many women prefer UEPs because they provide safe spaces for decent work. Workplace amenities must include toilets, resting spaces, drinking water, and childcare facilities. This can set a positive benchmark for private markets as well and increase women’s labour force participation.
Wages and Skilling: Typically, UEPs are aligned to minimum state wages. However, states must consider introducing the concept of living wages, which broadens the discussion on wages to include skill levels, and account for input factors such as the nature and location of work. A model such as this will additionally build a component of apprenticeship, allowing new and unskilled workers to learn from experienced workers and eventually find e permanent work.
While UEPs are a vital lifeline for many women in urban India, high uptake should not be the end goal. UEPs must go beyond being safety nets, to imbibe not just protective and preventive measures, but transformative measures that address women’s labour force participation. This will need UEPs to adopt a more innovative approach, offering better wages, an expansive set of contextualised works, greater access, as well as safety and dignity. The true measure of success lies in building upon this foundation.
Vrashali Khandelwal is a Consultant at Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and her work revolves around issues of informality and social protection. Sukrit Nagpal is a researcher and practitioner at IIHS and his work focuses on urban housing and informal work.
