MazdoorMitra

The informal labor sector in India is massive, with estimations going well into the millions. Currently, there is no formal institution for daily wage (informal) laborers working in sectors involving construction and other similar work here in India. Thus, each contractor has their own way of keeping track of workers, their compensations, overtime due, etc. This also makes it difficult for the government to take on the mammoth task of formalizing this sector, for the purpose of job security and such. The workers are, thus, forced to work under the contractors in a verbal agreement.

This is a pan-India problem and has a huge impact on the lives of millions of people, and their families, who get paid for the day's work, not knowing if they can get any work the following day. Thus, formalizing this sector can be the first step in allowing institutions like the government to intervene and provide job security to workers, introduce policies, etc.

India today is one of the biggest smartphone markets in the world. Smartphones and inexpensive internet access have become ubiquitous, and people from all walks of life, including daily wage workers, are more likely than not to possess a smartphone.

Our solution involves a digital platform where contractors and workers can easily connect through an app, keep track of their work "contracts", overtime dues, wages, etc., and allow for easy settlement of pay as well. The hope is to take a first step towards some form of formalization for this huge sector, where millions exist but have no recognition.

Again, the informal sector is massive, and there are huge differences in how they operate across India. Still, with some preliminary examination, we have found certain patterns:

• Workers usually gather at a "chowk", which is any predetermined public place such as a bus stand, a sidewalk, etc., every morning waiting for contractors to show up for work. They then form a verbal agreement and go with the contractor for the agreed-upon work.
• Many chowks may exist even within the same part of the city, and workers usually visit the same chowk every day.
• Workers currently have little to no leverage in negotiating their pay. Different chowks, for the most part, are independent and there is currently nothing akin to a union, further putting workers in a worse position.

The platform aims to provide better pay to the workers, given the workers and contractors can both see competent pay in the region or the minimum wage mandated by law.

The contractors too can benefit from the platform. Usually, contractors are seen using a simple ledger to keep track of the workers they employ, and their wages. This works for smaller projects, but for larger projects, most of their time goes into maintaining the ledger, which can get tedious and cumbersome. The platform will thus solve their problem as well.

Of course, the government has also indicated that formalizing this sector is one of their concerns, towards which this can act as a first step since as of now this sector is really just a black box. 

Our college campus is located in an area that is surrounded by a lot of construction sites, and we have been in close relation with the workers here since. It was in talking to them that we found out about the situation they are in.

Additionally, we believe that we have taken input, and will continue to take input from them during each of the subsequent stages of developing this project, hence giving it the best shot at succeeding.

So far, we have built and tested a rudimentary version of the platform with just the bare essential features, for the contractor so far. We have a timeline and a list of things to do and plan to continue working on it in the future.

Specifically, we are facing issues with respect to getting more input and consensus from across India. We are a team of 4 people, and it is not feasible for us to be travelling all across the country to collect stats and data. 

Additionally, we are also hoping to get guidance on the proper deployment of this project, as the scale is quite ambitious. We are tech savvy, but at the end of the day, still students, and there are many things to consider when properly launching a digital platform of this scale.

While no other substantial initiatives have been taken in this field, the closest to this would be the khatabook app or the plethora of other apps, none of them have tried to approach the problem at the fundamental level, which is to formalise and enter the sector into the digital space.

The scale of our solution is quite ambitious, aiming to be the de facto platform to which workers go for picking up jobs. The immediate outcome, hopefully, would be to allow workers to negotiate for better pay and avoid being exploited by contractors since they can easily see competent pay on the platform in the region. It can also be helpful for them in utilizing the existing policies that are in place that the workers may not have been aware of.

In the long term, the platform could allow for a formalization of the sector, with legal support for the quick daily contracts that these workers sign up for.

The impact goal, as of now, is to provide better working conditions for daily wage workers, and the indicator for that would be the number of people using the solution's platform, their feedback, the hourly / daily rates they receive etc.

Currently, the solution is based on developing a smartphone app.

Currently, there are 4 of us in the team. We are all Undergraduate students at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur.

We all started working on this about 5 months ago, though due to college work and other projects, we have been able to give it about 2 months of actual time.

Right now our team is quite small, it's only 4 of us at the moment. If we do end up making this into a company, depending on how things play out, we would definitely make sure that the team stays diverse, to bring fresh perspectives and angles to the discussions. We understand the importance of making an active effort to keep the team open to people from all walks of life.

As of now, we have not focussed on a concrete business model yet. We are planning on launching the platform and services at no cost to end users initially, hoping to use the data and stats generated as a result for further steps.