Employment Conditions, Structural Change, and Industrial Policy in Neoliberal India: An Enterprise-level Analysis of Employment Status, 2004–2024

Avanindra Nath Thakur and Priyanshi Chaudhary

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 257-290

Abstract: Structural transformation of the workforce in terms of shifting a sizable section of workers from primary/low-paid/informal to secondary (manufacturing)/high-paid/formal employment has remained a crucial challenge for India’s industrial policies. During the neoliberal regime, such transformation was expected through private sector expansion, positively associated with the economy’s overall growth. Recent industrial policies and programs emphasize entrepreneurial development as a strategy for achieving the successful economic transformation of the country. The fundamental assumption underlying this policy discourse is to provide an enterprise with enough information and awareness about the existing economic demand and to correct the supply-side factors in line with overall demand. Strategies to foster higher growth and address relevant supply-side constraints remained primary policy tools. Using unit-level data from NSSO surveys, this article explores employment structure changes by mapping changes in the share of workers engaged in manufacturing or secondary activities across major enterprise types in 2004–2024. It also examines how the change in the workforce structure improved job quality. It is argued that, despite initiating many schemes and programs, the overlooked demand-side problems and the market’s exclusionary nature have not effected the structural transformation of employment.

Keywords: Structural transformation; social security; employment policy; industrial policy; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/22779760251339907 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:agspub:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:257-290

DOI: 10.1177/22779760251339907

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy from Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().