Less than a quarter Indians under social protection net: ILO Report

Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore and Australia lead the chart in the Asia Pacific region with 100 per cent of their population covered under at least one social protection benefit

Only 24.4 per cent of Indians, even fewer than Bangladesh (28.4 per cent), are under any sort of social protection benefit, according to a latest report on social protection by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), released on Friday.

The report titled ‘World Social Protection Report 2020-22: Regional companion report for Asia and the Pacific’ is a companion to the ILO’s ‘World Social Protection Report 2021-22’, that gives a regional overview of the social protection in the Asia and Pacific region.

The report notes that Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore and Australia have 100 per cent social protection net, while in Myanmar and Cambodia, the number stands below 10 per cent.  

The report notes that owing to the relatively low investment in social protection, the amounts transferred under non-contributory benefits are usually too low to provide adequate protection. “With contributory schemes typically limited to those working in the formal sector and non-contributory schemes still mostly targeted on the poorest, India's social security benefits are lower than the five per cent of GDP per capita ($2,277),” the report said.  

However, the report appreciated India’s higher coverage rate achieved through a combination of contributory and non-contributory schemes through its progressive extension of coverage by combining different tiers of social protection such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA), which offers a degree of protection for informal sector workers for up to 100 days.

The report notes three out four workers in the Asia Pacific region are not protected in the event of illness or injury sustained at work. “Countries with lower GDP per capita tend to have low levels of work injury coverage for example, Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Pakistan cover fewer than 5 per cent of their workers,” the report said.

According to the report, as of 2020, only 46.9 per cent of the global population was effectively covered by at least one social protection benefit, while the remaining 53.1 per cent as many as 4.1 billion people were left wholly unprotected. Highlighting the inherent gender inequality in the social protection coverage, the report makes note women’s coverage lag behind men’s by a substantial 8 percentage points.

The report further notes that the large majority of the working-age population in the world 69.4 per cent, or 4 billion people are only partially protected or not protected at all.