At 78%, Telangana district Nirmal on top in women’s share in informal workers

Why in the News

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has released the first district level estimates of India’s informal sector drawn from a large scale national survey. They come from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) of 2025, which covers enterprises outside the corporate sector and outside agriculture. Women are 78% of all informal workers in Nirmal district of northern Telangana, the highest share recorded for any district. Female participation in informal work turns out to vary far more between districts than any national figure suggests. The districts where women dominate this workforce are also among the lowest paying, which is the tension the new granularity exposes.

What does the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises cover?

1. The universe surveyed: It covers unincorporated establishments in manufacturing, trade and other services, which is the part of the economy usually described as the informal sector.
2. What it leaves out: Agriculture is outside its scope, as are enterprises incorporated as companies.
3. Coverage of this round: The report carries estimates for 757 districts.
4. A caveat on district identity: MoSPI notes that the districts covered may not match the present administrative map, because boundaries, names and new districts have changed since.

How wide is the spread between districts?

1. The national benchmark: Across India women are 29% of informal workers.
2. The bottom of the list: In Rudraprayag in Uttarakhand women are 6.7% of informal workers.
3. A state boundary makes the difference: Nanded in Maharashtra, immediately across the border from the top ranked district, sits 288th with women at 31%.

What regional pattern do the district numbers reveal?

1. The top ten are regionally clustered: All ten districts with the highest female share lie in south India or the north east, in Telangana, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram.
2. Parity is rare: Women are at least half the informal workforce in only 25 districts, 22 of them in the south or the north east, with three in the east including Pakur in Jharkhand and Deogarh in Odisha.
3. A third is a wider club: Women account for at least 33% of the informal workforce in 237 districts.

Does a high female share come with better pay?

1. The best payer among high share districts is modest: South West Khasi Hills in Meghalaya pays Rs 1.7 lakh per hired worker, about 35% above the national average of around Rs 1.3 lakh.
2. The top paying district has few women: Dehradun pays Rs 4.6 lakh per hired worker, and women are 19% of its informal workforce.
3. The pattern that follows: High female participation coincides with low earnings per worker rather than with better paid work.

What do the ownership and concentration numbers add?

1. Participation tracks ownership: Districts with the greatest female participation also carry the highest share of female owned proprietary establishments, and the leading district reaches almost 80% on that measure.
2. Scale sits elsewhere: North 24 Parganas in West Bengal has the most informal workers, at 21.3 lakh, and the most establishments, at 16.6 lakh.
3. Output is concentrated: The ten districts with the most establishments account for around 11% of total Gross Value Added (the value of output less the cost of inputs bought in, which is how a sector’s contribution is measured), and the top fifty for almost a third of it.
4. The stated purpose of the release: MoSPI’s position is that the diversity of activity and local conditions makes granular statistics necessary for evidence based policymaking.

Challenges to district level informal sector measurement

1. Boundary churn breaks comparability: A district measured once cannot be tracked over time once it is split, merged or renamed before the next round. Eg. Telangana raised its district count from 10 to 33 in 2016.
   The Fix: Publish every round against a frozen reference map alongside the current one, so a district series survives reorganisation.
2. Excluding agriculture removes most rural informal work: The survey frame leaves out the sector that still employs the largest number of informal workers. Eg. Agriculture remains the single largest employer in the Periodic Labour Force Survey’s distribution of workers.
   The Fix: Release the unincorporated estimates together with the labour force survey’s agricultural numbers as one district profile.
3. A high female share can record distress rather than progress: Unpaid family labour and home based piece work enter the count as participation with no wage attached to it. Eg. Beedi rolling and garment stitching in home units are recorded as enterprise work paid at piece rates.
   The Fix: Report unpaid family helpers separately from hired workers for every district.
4. Enterprise surveys miss the smallest and most mobile units: Vendors and units without fixed premises are hard to list, so they are undercounted at source. Eg. The survey and registration of street vendors required by the Street Vendors Act, 2014 remains incomplete in many towns.
   The Fix: Use municipal vending registers and welfare board rolls as a supplementary listing frame for mobile units.

Conclusion

The release turns a state level statistic into a district one, and that changes what an administrator can act on. The pattern it exposes is that where women work most in the informal economy, that work pays least, which is a question about the kind of enterprise available locally rather than about willingness to work. The milestone to watch is whether these estimates are repeated on the same frame, because a single snapshot cannot show whether participation and earnings are moving together or apart.

Back2Basics: MoSPI and the National Sample Survey

1. The ministry: MoSPI is the nodal body for India’s official statistical system and releases the national income and price statistics.
2. The survey arm: The National Statistical Office conducts large sample surveys through the National Sample Survey, which began in 1950.
3. The companion employment survey: The Periodic Labour Force Survey supplies employment and unemployment estimates, and it counts workers rather than enterprises.
4. The advisory body: The National Statistical Commission, set up in 2005 on the Rangarajan Commission’s recommendation, advises on statistical priorities and standards.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2023, GS3, 15 marks] Most of the unemployment in India is structural in nature. Examine the methodology adopted to compute unemployment in the country and suggest improvements.”