India’s informal sector remains a chronic conundrum for scholars and policymakers. It has been studied widely and deeply for decades but a clear understanding remains elusive. Policy prescriptions have been attempted but defy implementation. For scholars, its riddles range from its very definitions to its empirical size and behaviour. Yet, with all these loose ends, this ubiquitous sector serves as a major dynamo in the nation’s economic and social development. Despite their numerical strength and their active participation in social landscapes that are impacted by public policies, and as voters who shape electoral outcomes, the ability of firms and workers in the informal economy to gain political leverage in the interests of very small firms and their workforces remains invisible at best; ignored at worst.

In this Essay, Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, internationally renowned for her scholarship on India’s informal economy for over five decades, delineates how the tides of liberalisation, and more recently, the rightward turn in economic policies have only further fragmented this workforce. These “sinews of India’s backbone”, she points out, directly or indirectly drive the widely acclaimed onward march of India’s corporate sector but continue to remain exploited.

The National Sample Survery Office (NSSO) recent;ly released two reports of its Annual Survey of Unincoporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) for the years 2021-22 and 2022-23. A factsheet containing the highlights of these two AUSES Surveys was also released. The ASUSE measures the “economic and operational characteristics of unincorporated non-agricultural etablishements in manufacturing, trade, and other services sectors (excluding construction.) The three documents, released in July 2024, can be accessed through the links provided here.