Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Impact on the Indian Informal Sector

Abstract

Form Wuhan city of China, Coronavirus has reached every corner of the world. India is also struggling to protect its population from it. The Government of India declared nationwide lock down initially for a period of twenty-one days and then it was extended. During the period of lock down all activities like educational, cultural, religious and economical were restricted. Therefore, present paper highlights the various problems informal workers faced during this period. The paper focuses on the informal sector because in India nearly 92 per cent of the workforce works in the informal sector. The data gathered revealed that during the period of lockdown, informal workers faced various problems like lack of support from government in the form of social security, job loss, food scarcity, lack of sanitizers and problem of migration from one place to another. It is suggested that the government should support informal workers in order to compensate the loss caused due to lockdown.