Invisible workers of kashmir

Home Based Workers of Kashmir-Informal Sector: “Invisible Economic Boosters of the State” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) ensures right to work, favourable conditions of work without any discrimination, right to equal pay for equal work and tries to ensure that everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his/her interests. Apart from ensuring right to work as everyone’s right to the opportunity to gain his or her living, rights at work that include the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work and to form and join trade unions are also important. These rights are recognised and guaranteed not only in the main human rights instruments but also in International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Conventions.

The condition of home based workers in the informal sector of Kashmir is yet to reach to the marks set by these international conventions. This concept paper tries to give an overview of home based workers in Kashmir-Informal sector. The work and studies done by organizations like Human Welfare Voluntary Organization (HWVO) have provided a background material for this paper.

By:- Tahir Farooqi and Ashish Singh

Jammu and Kashmir which is recognized as heaven on earth is also famous for its Handicraft industry. The Era of King Zain-ul-Abidin (A.D. 1420-70) popularly known as Badshah- is seen one of the glorious periods of the state Handicrafts. It was in his time talented craftsmen from across central Asia were invited and were setteled to empower local communities with their skills. Later in Maharaja Gulab Singh also encouraged the Handicrafts in the princely State of Jammu & Kashmir. But later during the rule of Maharaja Pratab Singh the industry received a huge setback when the policy was adapted to replace handmade goods with machine made. But then by the beginning of 20th century the industry got revived.

In Kashmir the home based informal workers (including female and males) include the handicraft (Needle work, Ari work, knitting etc), handloom (carpet and its allied

capacities through trainings and education, also the workers need to be organized in

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people which need attention would be trying to help them by way of building their

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activities) etc. From the grassroots experience the challenges and major issues for the

groups with common interest, and training them and further upgrading their skills including the soft/life skills and

linking them with financial and other relevant

stakeholders for sustenance of their livelihood and well being is something that can be taken up in the long term. The groups can be groomed into rights based self sustaining groups who are made aware about their rights and are trained through continued support for advocacy, which would make a way to exit for the organisations and the groups at grass root level taking the overall responsibility at their panchayat/ village level.

Women, girls should be focus of the programs so as to bring forth women leadership which would further strengthen women and girls are provided with opportunities to grow and act as role model for other females around. Also there is need to have sessions with parents/heads of the families and general masses for reducing stress and building the resilience.

Such interventions can lead to transfer of job skills, improvised and proper techniques of doing work and also upgrade the skills of the marginal communities and also a window of opportunity for exposing the workers to business skills and improved bargaining by workers with middlemen there by getting fairer wages and reducing the margins of middlemen.

Das et al (2015) referring to previous research studies (Goldin, 1995, Mammen & Paxson, 2000) write that rising household incomes could lead to a withdrawal of women from the labour market. Klassen and Peters (2012) also find that for urban Indian women, participation in the workforce at lower educational level is dictated by economic necessity. Gonzalez et al (2015) in a recent IMF study find that presence of gender based legal restrictions, particularly women’s rights to inheritance and property as well as legal impediments to undertaking economic activities (opening a bank account or freely pursuing a profession) are strongly associated with larger gender gaps in workforce participation.

Sheikh (2012) in his paper (“Community Innovations in the Informal Sector: Study of workers and communities in Kashmir. He writes, “In Kashmiri shawls many

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communities have developed certain strong informal networks thus share and diffuse

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Kashmiri Pashmina Shawls”) provides an interesting analogy of informal sector

knowledge and innovations with each other. For instance, strong ties are visible

between the designer, color caller, talim writer and the weaver. The members of these four communities interact on a regular basis, share and diffuse information within the network and help each other in case some problem arises. Nevertheless, the same communities

have

very

weak

or

no

ties

with

other

communities.”

Based on the work of organizations like HWVO who are engaged with informal sector workers in Kashmir it is to be emphasised that informal sector workers need to have such social networks as it can reduce and manage the social risks which occur time to time in their work-atmospheres and are not taken care of by government or the market forces.

It has been observed in HWVO’s work with the homebased workers in Kashmir that removing any stakeholder in value chain is not possible and does not lead to success so a model which will give fairer prices to the working class and along the value chain would be something which can be tried through during the intervention phase. Homebased workers are invisible, unrecognized, voiceless and unorganized. As such, they are deprived of their basic rights and they work under poor labor conditions that include low wages, long hours, irregular work, and delayed payments. Some major recommendations from the sample study conducted by HWVO on Home Based Workers in Kashmir are as follows: 

Awareness about Labour rights and other social security schemes.



Training to enhance leadership qualities, soft skills and overall capacity.



Providing social networkers to ensure a minimum social security



Access to basic amenities

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:

Human Welfare Voluntary Organization (HWVO) an NGO based in Srinagar has been working from last two years on Rights of Workers (Home based workers and general workers) with special focus on Women Empowerment (women awareness, knowledge and skill building with Livelihood alternatives) so with this initiative Organization has footprints in the villages of Bandipora, Baramulla and Srinagar districts of Kashmir Valley, but from past 1 year the focus has been Bandipora as the areas and communities have low socio economic parameters, while a good majority of handicraft industry is situated in this district, and less than half of the villages are shia majority areas and generally Shia community figures very low on socio-economic and education indicators within the valley.

References: http://www.redesist.ie.ufrj.br/ga2012/paper/FayazAhmad.pdf http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_21_November_2012/23.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dac/povertyreduction/43280298.pdf Das, S.,Jain-Chandra, S., Kochhar, K. and .Kumar, N. (2015). IMF Working paper “Women Workers in India: Why So Few Among So Many? http://bit.ly/1K2HUro file:///C:/Users/Ashish%20Singh/Downloads/1368782651.pdf http://laborsta.ilo.org/informal_economy_E.html http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinionfiles/2682.pdf http://ilera2015.com/index.php/en/docman/presentations/3-01-informalemployment/file https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp1555.pdf

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http://www.ilo.org/protection/areas-ofwork/WCMS_DOC_PRO_ARE_INF_EN/lang--en/index.htm