Revision summary
Social security is public cover for life risks of income and care. India’s recent measures include work, food, health and thin pensions. Informal workers are the test of every scheme. Women’s unpaid and casual work often misses the record. Family still does most security that the state names.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Social security is public protection against life risks of income, illness, old age, maternity, and injury. In India it is a patchwork for a mostly informal workforce.
Body
Meaning
- It is not only a factory PF. It is the social wage that markets do not give mazdoors and unpaid carers.
- A. R. Desai would ask whether measures reach class structure or only the organised few.
Recent measures
- Rights-based work and food: MGNREGA and the National Food Security Act as rural floors.
- Health insurance and accident covers for informal workers, uneven in portability.
- Pensions for the elderly, widows, and persons with disabilities, still thin relative to care needs of active ageing.
- Maternity benefit expansion on paper; informal women still miss it.
- E-Shram-type databases try to name the unorganised worker as a citizen of welfare.
Limit
- Underemployment and gender discrimination mean many women never enter the record.
- Implementation meets the same capture as other rural programmes.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SS[Social security] --> F[Food work health pension] I[Informal majority] --> G[Gap] DB[Worker databases] --> F
Conclusion
Social security is organised protection against want. Recent Indian measures widened floors in food, work, health, and pensions, yet the informal and gendered majority still lives on family security more than on the state.
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