Early in the morning, the door-bell rings. The paperwala throws the bundle of newspaper at our door-step and moves away hurriedly. Soon afterwards, we get ready and hop into a rickshaw, auto or bus to go to our offices, factories or shop. Reaching our work places we find the watchman respectfully securing our workplaces and the cleaning personnel doing their jobs. In a typical government office, we meet our personal staff and assistants working with us. The common element between all these kinds of workers- paperwala, auto-driver or bus driver, rickshaw puller, watchman, office boys, cleaners, computer operators etc. is that they all belong to the informal sector. In fact, our socio-economic space is overwhelmingly informal whether it is relating to employment or other aspects of our life. However we tend to overlook and underestimate the importance of this sector which is multi-dimensional in its structure. The concept of ‘Informal Sector’ owes its origin to the British anthropologist Keith Hart’s study in Ghana. Later on in 1970s ILO brought in the element of ‘decent work’ into this concept which ‘involved rights to work, at work, to labour organisation (or dialogue) and to social security’. But some scholarshave pointed out that it would be extremely limiting if the idea of ‘informality’ is restricted just to the economic sphere.
