‘India has the world’s largest young workforce’ is an oft-repeated adage attached to the demographic dividend of the country. The immense excitement for the potential of India’s youth has seemingly overshadowed the fact that, given the nation’s falling mortality rate, its population is rapidly getting old. The recent Youth in India 2022 report by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has recognised this shifting demographic phenomenon. According to the report, the youth population (aged 15–29 years) is expected to grow initially before declining in the second half of the period from 2011 to 2036. The proportion of youth in the total population increased from 26.6 percent in 1991 to 27.9 percent in 2016. Their share in the population is then projected to decline to 22.7 percent by 2036. On the contrary, the proportion of the elderly in the total population has increased from 6.8 percent in 1991 to 9.2 percent in 2016 and is expected to reach 14.9 percent in 2036. According to another forecast, by 2061, every fourth person in India will be over 60.

As India’s population ages, we need to start thinking about those among the elderly that are more vulnerable. This includes elderly workers in the unorganised sector, which employs more than 90 percent of the nation’s workforce.

Elderly workers in the unorganised sector are highly vulnerable

The signs of discomfort are already appearing in the data. A total of 138.54 lakh individuals aged 61 and above availed work benefits under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme in 2020–21. This number has been increasing each year—it was 100.08 lakh in 2019–20 and 93.85 lakh in 2018–19. Elderly people are falling back on safety nets such as MGNREGA, and this is a telling sign of the lack of old-age care they experience.

The absence of financial security also appears to be a significant threat to the elderly, who do not have enough options and opportunities to earn money. Currently, approximately 25 lakh individuals are covered by the national pension system under the unorganised sector category. This number forms only about 0.6 percent of the total estimated size of the informal sector in India. These statistics are a cause for concern as the demographic size of the elderly is only going to rise.

Individuals who participate in the informal sector do not have a cut-off age similar to the retirement age in the formal sector. The low wages and income insecurity of the informal sector leads individuals to a point where they have to work on a daily basis to earn. Swaniti visited a naka (labour market) in the city of Pune as part of a study on social protection for unorganised workers in Maharashtra. During the visit, we observed that young people seem to dominate the naka for work and older people tend to have a harder time getting hired. Ageing leads to lower physical strength, and it is more feasible for the contractor to hire someone younger who can do more physical work. A senior citizen at the naka in Pune remarked, “We do not have anyone to care for us so we have to come to find work here, and contractors do not want to hire us because we are old—they assume we will not be able to do heavy lifting work”.

As there is no specific retirement age in the informal sector, individuals work as long as they physically can. Wages are low and depend on actually getting work on any given day. This economic reality leaves a lot of individuals in constant need for daily work. As an individual gets older, their ‘market value’ seems to decrease. Older workers want to work every day to sustain themselves, but they find it tougher to compete with swathes of younger people (who are facing an unemployment crisis themselves and have to resort to the informal sector) showing up at establishments such as the nakas.

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