When Home-Based Workers Raise Their Voices: An Indian Perspective

Abstract

�� he re-emergence of interest in informal-sector issues worldwide has created an environment within which attention can be directed more effectively to the informal economy in developing countries, and to the “new” as well as the “traditional” types of employment (and insecurity) that characterize this work. Developed countries’ renewed concern with informality, probably itself a consequence of their own changing economic structure, has generated new thinking and new data-collection methodologies that can be adapted to study informal workers in very different situations and nations. At the international level, after years of negotiations the International Conference of Labor Statisticians (ICLS) adopted a workable definition of the informal sector in 1993 that has been incorporated into the new System of National Accounts (SNA). The SNA characterizes the informal sector as consisting of units engaged in the production of goods or services with the primary objective of generating employment and incomes for the persons involved. As unincorporated enterprises owned by households, such units form part of the household sector. They are distinguished from corporations and quasi-corporations by their legal status and the type of accounts they hold. These household enterprises do not have any legal status independent of the households or household members owning them. The ICLS definition does not specify the kind of workplace, the extent of fixed assets, the longevity of such enterprises,