AT Times When Limbs May Fail: Social Security for Unorganised Workers in Karnataka

Policy makers, therefore, often encounter the following questions while formulating the social security schemes. What are the priority social security needs of unorganized workers? What existing mechanisms and strategies do they use to meet the social security needs? Do social security needs and risk management strategies vary across different categories and within a particular category of unorganized workers? Are workers willing to contribute to social security? If yes, how much? Is it sufficient to introduce financially viable and sustainable schemes for the workers? If not, what are the subsidy implications for the government? For which categories of unorganized workers are subsidies needed? And, so on. This paper is a modest attempt to address these questions with the objectives of analyzing the social security needs of the unorganized sector workers, examining the risk management mechanisms that are most frequently used by these workers and assessing their willingness to participate in contributory social security schemes. The study is based on data drawn from a large sample of agricultural,construction and domestic workers, accounting for a large proportion of unorganized workers in both urban and rural areas of four agro-climatically different districts in Karnataka.