It is well
known t
hat
a major part of
the
workforce in India and o
ther developing
countries work
in informal sector.
Informal sector has become an increasingly popular
subject of study, not just in economics, but also in
sociology
and
anthropology.
Keith
Hart
was th
e first person to
introduce
the term „Informal Sector?
.
H
e introduced
it
while making a
presentation on “Informal income opportunities and urban
employment in Ghana” in
Institute of Development Studies (
IDS
)
in September 1971
at a conference co
-
organized b
y Rita Cruise O?Brien and
Richard Jolly
on urban
employment in Africa
months before International Labour Organisation (ILO)
employment mission to
Kenya came with its report “
Employment Incomes and
Equality
”
(jolly
,
2006).
Hart distinguished
formal and informal (both legitimate and
illegitimate) income opportunities on the basis of whether the activity entailed wage
or self
-
employment (Hart, 1973).
The
refore the
concept of
informal sector used by
H
art
was limited to small self
-
employed individ
ual workers. Although
H
art?s
concept
of informal sector
had some limitations
,
the introduction of this concept
made it
possible to incorporate activities that were previously ignored in theoretical models of
development and in national economic accounts (S
waminathan, 1991).