United Nations General Assembly High-Level Event

Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication and a Sustainable Recovery

“National and Regional Commitments to create

decent jobs, expand social protection, and support a just transition”

Remarks by Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman,

Minister of Finance, Government of India

(28 September 2021)

Excellencies and Distinguished Delegates,

1. I thank the United Nations for giving me the opportunity to share the experiences of my country, India, with this august gathering.

2. The world is still passing through the gravest pandemic yet recorded in human history.  Safety and security of people in all segments of population are severely affected.

3. India has taken several measures to ameliorate the immediate distress, arrest job-losses and provide necessary protection to vulnerable sections of the population.  India’s free vaccination programme is globally one of the biggest.  We have covered 875 million doses as of today.  Migrant workers, exceeding 4 million were assisted by providing them help, construction workers were given  in situ support to sail through the trying times and most importantly, more than 100 million rural unorganised workers received wages through the work amounting to more than Rs.1 trillion.

4. India launched a comprehensive economic package under “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” or Self-reliant India to combat the impact of the pandemic and to revive economic growth.  A financial package of USD 366 billion – amounting to more than 13 per cent of India’s GDP – was deployed to create employment opportunities for workers of the unorganised sector, strengthening the MSME Sector and for promoting the rural economy.

5. To improve social protection in the place of archaic labour laws, our government brought in the new Social Security and Wage Codes.  This will ensure wider coverage, faster settlement of dues and clarity about benefits.

6. A National Database of Unorganised Sector Workers, (e-Shram portal, as we call it) has been launched to ensure last mile delivery for millions of unorganised workers.

7. There is a need for collaboration and learning from the experiences of other countries.  Based on India’s experience, I would like to share a few thoughts:

i. The comprehensive social protection system envisaged to be created under the proposed Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social Protection should have digitalisation of public financial management systems at the core of the design.  In India, the Direct Benefit Transfer method enabled, what we call, the Jan Dhan, the Aadhaar Biometric Identification&theMobile Trinity helped during the pandemic in rolling out the social protection measures without any delays whatsoever.

ii. Insights, the second point I would like to share is ‘insights’ from behavioral economics can be leveraged in on-boarding those workers who are currently not covered under social protection schemes on to formal social security nets.  In India, our Government has borne the mandated contribution to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) scheme for both employees and employers for a three-full month period during the 1^st wave in 2020 and again for three months after the 2^nd wave in April 2021 as well.  This enabled the inclusion of an estimated 7.18 million workers in a formal social security framework.

iii. One key principle underpinning the post-pandemic recovery with policies integrating health and social protection is the institutional recognition of the need for mental well-being of vulnerable sections through psycho-social support. Future policies must adequately provide for this imperative.

Thank you for your attention.

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