On estimating home workers in India

Abstract

Although home-working is a phenomenon prevalent in almost all societies, it sometimes takes disturbing form especially in the labour surplus countries of the third world. It is artued that from the viewpoint of social justice, we must be concerned about sucha category of workers who are de jure self-employed workers but de facto employees at the mercy of their employers who only take advantage of the situation and shrug-off all responsibility as employers. In order to assess the magnitude of the problem, some broad measurement of the dimensions is necessary. In the present paper, a conceptual framework is presented to categorize home-workers into various groups and sub-groups having somewhat homogeneous conditions. Finally, first approximations are attempted about the magnitude of workers in different categories and sub-categories of Home-Working based on 1981 Census data.