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Towards Demystifying Self-Employment in India: Delineation, Dimensionality, Differentia

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  • Ritu Dewan

    (Institute for Human Development)

Abstract

Labour markets have been undergoing significant transformations in the past few decades. The unprecedented dominance of self-employment including petty production especially in India warrants a detailed contextualisation, incorporating several complementary and simultaneous processes including rapidly declining employment especially for the most vulnerable and marginalised and the prevailing paradigm of growth delinked from development and creation of job opportunities. This paper attempts to locate the essential foundations of self-employment and petty production within the on-going process of primitive accumulation via the analysis of a burgeoning subsistence need economy especially microenterprises, and the expropriation of labour in both absolute and relative terms that masquerades as exclusion and marginalisation of even those already employed through evaluation of the components of quality of employment. Of necessity, gendered analysis is inbuilt at all levels and all layers. Also dealt with are extra-economic labour market structural inequalities as well as assessment of partisan governmentality through evaluation of budgetary support to self-employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Ritu Dewan, 2024. "Towards Demystifying Self-Employment in India: Delineation, Dimensionality, Differentia," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 67(2), pages 285-315, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:67:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-024-00503-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s41027-024-00503-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Saskia Vossenberg, 2013. "Women Entrepreneurship Promotion in Developing Countries: What explains the gender gap in entrepreneurship and how to close it?," Working Papers 2013/08, Maastricht School of Management.
    2. Antoinette Schoar, 2010. "The Divide between Subsistence and Transformational Entrepreneurship," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 57-81, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ashwini Deshpande & Smriti Sharma, 2016. "Disadvantage and discrimination in self-employment: caste gaps in earnings in Indian small businesses," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 325-346, February.
    4. Bishwanath Goldar & Suresh Chand Aggarwal, 2023. "Trends in Employment, Productivity, Real Wages and Labour Standards in Indian Manufacturing in Recent Years," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 66(2), pages 561-581, June.
    5. Ashwini Deshpande & Smriti Sharma, 2016. "Disadvantage and discrimination in self-employment: caste gaps in earnings in Indian small businesses," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 325-346, February.
    6. Tonia Warnecke, 2013. "Entrepreneurship and Gender: An Institutional Perspective," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 455-464.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Primitive accumulation; Petty production; Self-employment; Labour expropriation; Budgetary evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

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