Social Security for Urban Poor : Study of the Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is to explore how urban employment guarantee can be used as a means to provide social security for the urban poor, particularly women and migrant workers. To understand how such a scheme can be designed and implemented, the dissertation first evaluates the implementation of some primary objectives of MGNREGS to understand how a rights-based approach can be adopted in urban employment guarantee models as well. Since Kerala was the first state to have introduced an urban employment guarantee scheme, an analysis of its Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme occupies the rest of this dissertation in order to fully understand how such a scheme can be conceptualised and operationalised in other states. Through extensive fieldwork, this study critically examines the functioning of AUEGS, its design and implementation challenges based on experiences of workers, interactions with municipal and state level actors and experts. The dissertation provides recommendations for financing AUEGS by exploring financial alternatives at the urban local body level, how it can be re-focussed to only target women, and using Kudumbashree (women-based community organisation) to strengthen the social accountability provisions of the scheme that can help in better implementation of AUEGS. It concludes by recommending the need for such a scheme at the national level so as to not only meet the shortcomings of AUEGS highlighted in the dissertation, but to also increase the scope of the State to strengthen social security for the urban poor.