Market-oriented structural reforms in India, begun in the 1980s and
intensified in the 1990s, are widely believed to have put the economy
on a path of higher growth. But there are concerns that outcomes in
labor markets have not improved for large segments of the labor force. Many
observers of India’s labor markets are bothered by the slow growth of
employment in the organized sector—where the “good” jobs are. Despite growth
of around 5% in GDP per capita between 1993/94 and 1999/2000, the share of
the organized sector in total employment decreased from 7.3% to 7.1%.1 At the
same time, jobs in the organized sector have themselves been undergoing a
change, with contract labor getting a growing share of employment. More
broadly, workers on daily or periodic contracts have increased their share of
total wage and salary employment, in what some observers have described as
the “casualization” of the Indian workforce