Importance of social security measures for informal sector workers- a case study of a rural region in east burdwan district of West Bengal

Social security schemes have immense importance in catering to the well-being of rural unorganized sector workers in a developing country like India. It provides financial protection to the needy citizen. The market of unorganized workers or informal workers in India is large. Most of the informal workers are self-employed. Our study considers promotional and protective schemes for uplifting unorganized sector workers. This study examines the effectiveness of various social security schemes like old age pension, widow pension, Disability pension, PMAY, PROFLAL, MGNREGA, SGSY, JSY, PMUY, PDS system, Laxmi bhandar, Swastha Sathi scheme etc. in rural West Bengal. A survey for the study was conducted on a total of 320 households in eight villages across two blocks in the East Burdwan district of West Bengal. The impact of different security schemes on village dwellers working in the informal sector has been assessed entirely based on primary field survey data. On the other hand, in calculating the rate of diffusion of schemes like SHG, JSY, PMUY, and PMAY, we have considered several states of India based on the availability of data. In this case, secondary data taken from the India Stat site has been used. Diffusion of schemes, Test of Homogeneity, and Likert scale technique have been used as a methodology in this paper. The household survey reveals the economic condition of the villagers and how different government schemes help them for the betterment of their financial status. Also, few of them were deprived of those schemes though they ought to have benefitted from them. Results indicate that the Public Distribution System (PDS) is the most broadly accessed scheme, followed by MGNREGA(till 2020) and health insurance under the Swastha Sathi scheme. According to the survey, most of the villagers were fairly satisfied whereas a significant percentage of people were very dissatisfied due to various reasons such as lack of awareness, administrative complications, middleman intervention, etc. If more awareness camps can be conducted on the benefits and application process of various schemes and training programmes can be organized to increase the work efficiency of the women in SHGs then that will lead to a lot of financial benefit for common people.