Mental health and the floundering informal worker

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The theme of World Mental Health Day (October 10) this year is ‘mental health as a universal human right’. A segment often overlooked when it concerns mental health is the informal worker.

Informal workers’ mental health

• A study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) says that 15% of working age adults, globally, live with a mental disorder. On one hand, decent work influences mental health in a positive way while on the other, unemployment, or unstable or precarious employment, workplace discrimination, or poor and particularly unsafe working environments, can all pose a risk to a worker’s mental health.
• Workers in low paid, unrewarding or insecure jobs, or working in isolation, are more likely to be exposed to psychosocial risks, thus compromising their mental health.

The Indian experience

• India’s informal workforce accounts for more than 90% of the working population. These workers often operate without regulatory protection, work in unsafe working environments, endure long hours, have little access to social or financial protections, suffer high uncertainty and deep precarity, and face discrimination — all of which further undermine mental health and limit access to mental health care.

Gender disparities

• Over 95% of India’s working women engaged in informal, low paying, and precarious employment, often without social protection, in addition to suffering patriarchal structures and practices in their social and familial spaces.

Youth unemployment

• It is one of the highest in India which, along with the stigma around unemployment, significantly impacts their mental health. Moreover, an ILO report highlights how young workers are shifting to more precarious and informal work, accepting less pay and poorer working conditions, out of desperation, and, sometimes, giving up and exiting the labour force altogether.

State of Inequality in India Report 2022

• It observes that the unemployment rate actually increases with educational levels, particularly for educated young women who show an unemployment rate of 42%. With this phase of demographic dividend, where half of India’s population is of working age and projected to remain so for two decades, it is pertinent to think about the quality of employment and long term social security for them.

The elderly

• India will also become an ageing society in 20 years, with no apparent social security road map for this rapidly growing group that is especially vulnerable to poor mental health.
• Census of India 2011 shows that 33 million elderly people are working postretirement in informal work. Another study, by the ILO on elderly employment in India, shows high poverty among them, in terms of economic dependency and access to financial assets.

Impact of COVID-19

• A study by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) among informal workers in Delhi, mostly migrants, indicates that recovery post COVID19 remains uneven among informal worker cohorts. Many still report food insecurity, skipped meals, or reduced consumption.
• While certain schemes have received a higher allocation this year, others such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) have seen their funding slashed.
• In 2021, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported that 26% of the people who died by suicide were daily wage earners. Employment guarantee programmes can indeed improve mental health outcomes. Thus, social security can be:
• promotional: aiming to augment income
• preventive: aiming to forestall economic distress
• protective: aiming to ensure relief from external shocks.

Way forward: A relook at the Code on Social Security (CSS) 2020:

• It shows how glaring issues concerning the social security of India’s informal workforce still remain unheeded. While India should universalise social security, the current Code does not state this as a goal.
• Care needs drastic improvement Informal workers, despite their significant contribution to national income, are perennially exposed to various economic, physical, and mental vulnerabilities.
• India’s budgetary allocation for mental health (currently under 1% of the total health budget) has overfocused on the digital mental health programme.
• As the World Mental Health Report 2022 observed, addressing mental health involves strengthening community based care, and people centred, recovery oriented and human rights oriented care.

Conclusion

• There is an urgent need for proactive policies to improve mental health recognition and action. This is critical in upholding the basic human right to good health, including mental health, and in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 3 on ‘good health and wellbeing’ and SDG 8 on ‘decent work for all/economic growth’.