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Urbanization in Asia pp 41–57Cite as

Making the Connection Between Informal Self-Employment and Temporary Migration: Lessons from the Cycle Rickshaw Sector

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Abstract

Increasing numbers of rural workers in India engage in commuting as well as temporary and seasonal forms of migration to cities. Yet, the implications of such large-scale temporary worker movements for urban governance have received little attention. Drawing on a field study of the cycle rickshaw rental market in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, this chapter attempts to highlight the central role of urban informal markets in accommodating and supplying much-needed services to these underserved populations. The qualitative and quantitative evidence from Bilaspur makes a case for recognising the close interdependence of informal markets and mobile workers and offers a critical benchmark for evaluating policy interventions both for informal and multilocational workers in urban settings. Connecting the policy discourses on informal self-employment and rural-to-urban mobility is key to framing an appropriate policy, programmatic and regulatory responses to these most unprotected and invisible segments of the urban population. Three channels for such a policy connection need to be recognised: (1) existing regulatory frameworks for the informal sector impact the livelihoods of temporary migrants, (2) interventions for informal livelihoods that fail to account for mobile workforces may suffer from biased coverage and (3) informal markets that provide livelihoods for temporary and commuter migrants can suggest lessons and programmatic avenues to reach these workers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The focus here is on internal migration in the Indian context. International migration is beyond the scope of this chapter.

  2. 2.

    The term “rickshaw driver” is used in preference to “rickshaw puller” in this chapter, both to foreground the skill and dignity of the work and to distinguish the cycle rickshaw driver from the hand-rickshaw puller of popular imagination (Sood 2012).

  3. 3.

    The excerpt from Breman (2004, p. 411) that sums up the picture of own-account work or self-employment in the informal sector is worth quoting in full: “What is portrayed as own-account work carried out at the risk of the producer is in fact a more or less camouflaged form of wage labour. There is a wide diversity of arrangements which actually show a great similarity with tenancy or sharecropping relationships in agriculture, where the principle of self-employment is so undermined in practice that the dependency on the landowner is scarcely different from that of a contract labourer. This is true for many actors operating in the informal sector such as the “hirers” of a bicycle or motor taxi who must hand over a considerable proportion of their daily earnings to the owner of the vehicle, or for the street vendors who are provided their wares early in the morning on credit or commission from a supplier and then in the evening, after returning the unsold remainder, learn if and what they have retained from their transactions”.

  4. 4.

    Note that there is a long and continuing literature on the sector dating back to Gallagher’s comprehensive 1992 study in Bangladesh, which for reasons of space constraints, I do not review here(Gallagher 1992).

  5. 5.

    The advantages and disadvantages of this sampling approach are described in greater detail in Jain and Sood (2012).

  6. 6.

    It worth noting that a much larger cycle rickshaw rental variation is reported in studies from Delhi (Kurosaki 2012), where fleets are larger (Kurosaki et al 2012) and it appears that conditions vest significant market power in the cycle rickshaw owner.

  7. 7.

    Recent studies also suggest the strong formal–informal linkages in growth hubs such as Chennai and Bangalore (Sridhar and Reddy 2012, 2013).

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Acknowledgements

This study was made possible through a grant from the Einaudi Center for International Studies and the South Asia Programme at Cornell University. Additional support was provided by the Raipur regional office at ActionAid India. Thanks are due to the staff at the ActionAid Raipur and Bilaspur offices, especially Alok Satpathy, Siddheshwarji and Rajkumar Pandey for their help and guidance. A special debt of gratitude is owed to the late Mrs. Rita Maini and her family for generously hosting stay in Bilaspur. This project would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Kaushik Basu and, at a later stage, also of Erik Thorbecke. Thoughtful comments and feedback from Ravi Kanbur helped improve this research. Participants at the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth 2009 Special Conference on Measuring the Informal Economy in Developing Countries, in Kathmandu, Nepal, commented on some parts of this research. However, all remaining errors are the author’s.

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  1. Hyderabad, India

    Ashima Sood

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  1. Public Policy Research, Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

    Kala Seetharam Sridhar

  2. Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines

    Guanghua Wan

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Sood, A. (2014). Making the Connection Between Informal Self-Employment and Temporary Migration: Lessons from the Cycle Rickshaw Sector. In: Sridhar, K., Wan, G. (eds) Urbanization in Asia. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1638-4_4

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