Sunday Article

                                  India has limited success in social schemes

Due to poor design and lack of proper implementation mechanism, India’s insurance-based social protection programmes are yet to make an impact on the unorganized sector.

According to a World Bank report-Social Protection for a Changing India’, Insurance-based interventions remain in their infancy in terms of coverage of the unorganized sector.

The Indian government has started several social insurance based schemes, including Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), Aam Admi Bima Yojana (AABY) and social insurance for unorganised workers.

The report, however said that increasing informal sector coverage of social insurance is a challenge that India has had relatively limited success with until very recently, despite a series of central and state-specific schemes.

“This has been a product of poor design, inadequate attention to institutional and implementation arrangements, and a 'start-stop' approach to new initiatives," it said.

The report stated that the expansion is not easy, and many developing countries have struggled in expansion of social insurance coverage in the face of large informal sector.

While appreciating the RSBY scheme aimed at providing subsidised health insurance for hospitalisation for BPL households, the report said, "(it is) exciting and rapidly expanding initiative which can provide a way forward".

As per an estimate of National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), the unorganised sector constituted 86 per cent of total workers in 2004-05. Of the 393.2 million unorganised sector workers, agriculture accounted for 251.7 million and the rest 141.5 million are employed in the non-agriculture sector.