Informal employment in Indian railways: A case study of Mysore railway station

The service sector covers a wide array of activities ranging from services provided by the most sophisticated sector like telecommunications to simple services, highly capital intensive activities like civil aviation and shipping to employment-oriented activities like tourism and housing, infrastructure related activities like railways, roadways, and ports to social sector related activities like health and education. Indian Railways is one of the largest systems in the world under single management. It is also one of the very few railway systems in the world generating operating surpluses. With a modest beginning in India from 1853, the Indian Railways has emerged today as the main vehicle for socioeconomic development of the country. Indian railways is contributing significantly to the employment generation. One of the main objectives of railway vision 2020 is also to generate large scale productive employment. Indian railway is a labour intensive industry having a workforce of over 13.6 lakhs employees. Indian railway is one of the largest employers not only in India but also in the world. The workforce of Indian railway is a varied mass of people from the gang man at one end to chairman of railway board at apex level. Apart from these formal employment Indian railways is also generating a large scale of informal employment through forward and backward linkages. This paper is an attempt to look at the employment which has been generated indirectly by Indian railways, they are also called as service providers who are providing different services to passengers, they are dependent on Railways. This study tried to capture the informal employment created by Indian Railways at micro level, area of this study is Mysore city railway station. The Case study of Mysore city Railway station has proved that Indian Railways is capable of generating large scale of productive informal employment. It is providing good opportunity for unskilled or semiskilled labour and also for those who have left their education at primary or high school level. This studyhighlights the importance of Indian railways as informal employers.