Secure Livelihoods

Errol D’Souza ()
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Errol D’Souza: Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

Chapter Chapter 7 in Conceptualizing the Ubiquity of Informal Economy Work, 2020, pp 71-86 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In this chapter we scrutinize the vast literature on social security for unorganized workers in India that does not carefully provide a justification for this type of public assistance, treating it rather as an obvious obligation of any civilized society. Moreover, by viewing social security as a state, its focus is restricted to the outcomes of deprivation and vulnerability that characterize it. In contrast, we argue for shifting the focus of attention to processes whereby stochastic shocks and institutions empower or hinder households from attaining satisfactory incomes and well-being. A justification is provided in terms of the principle of equality of opportunity and it is argued that the concept of secure livelihoods is the appropriate vehicle for mobilizing the full import of this principle. The policies that are suggested by this reading are social assistance when the fundamental capacity to transform assets into well-being is impaired, credit-cum-insurance services when contingencies do not allow the smoothing of consumption, and the provision of complementary social and economic infrastructure of adequate quality and priced so as not to exclude the needy.

Keywords: Institutions to overcome vulnerability; Social security to address insecurity from shocks; Equality of opportunity; Well-being; Various forms of capital (human social etc.) and their transformation into incomes; Social and economic infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:spbchp:978-981-15-7428-3_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-7428-3_7

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