'Surveys on migrants and domestic staff aimed at policy interventions'

The labour ministry has commissioned three comprehensive surveys on migrants, domestic workers and professional bodies. The ministry has set up an expert group to oversee them. Prof Amitabh Kundu , co-chair of the expert group and distinguished fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, New Delhi, tells TOI’s Swati Mathur about the scope of the surveys and what they hope to achieve. Excerpts from the interview:

What is the idea behind the three labour surveys that have been commissioned by the government?The sight of men, women and children on the roads during the pandemic shook the government as well as the middle and upper classes. The policymakers wanted to do something to correct the situation. As a first step, they passed the labour codes, which to some extent empowers individual labourers. But to do something for migrant labourers, the first thing needed was data on how many people were going back from various parts of the country. This data didn’t exist. To help the government, I put together some information from registrations and data collected by civil societies, but there was no district-to district migration data since 2001. So the labour ministry was asked to get data on vulnerable workers — migrants, domestic workers, professional bodies.

What is the survey on professional bodies?
This one is not a survey of professional bodies, but to gauge, through professional bodies, the professionals they employ. For instance, people employed at a doctor’s clinic, or a lawyer’s chamber. We know that their working conditions are not very much better than other worker classes. We will try to capture data about employment generated through professional bodies and this will be an exercise updated, as I understand it, regularly.

Why have construction labourers been left outside the ambit of this exercise?
I don’t know. For now, the expert group has been mandated to oversee these three surveys. The labour bureau may choose to add construction labourers later.

Apart from numbers, what do surveys aim to find?
There will be household surveys for migrants. For domestic workers, we plan to include both households employing domestic workers and those supplying labour for domestic work. Our aim is to develop some sort of a multiplier, based on which we develop a coefficient and estimate actual number of domestic workers.

And the scope?
The parameters we want to generate are aimed at driving effective policy interventions. For workers and migrants, we will aim to find out their general socio-economic well-being, the hours they work, the conditions they work in etc.

When are the surveys likely to start?
We should start by February or March 2021. The results should take a year to publish.