Inventory of Informal Worker Organizations : India

This document summarizes our findings on informal workers’ organizations in India. There is relatively little research that has been done on informal workers’ organizations in India. My own work on organization efforts among Indian informal workers in construction, tobacco (or bidi), textiles, street vending, and waste picking suggests that the lack of research is not indicative of lack of activity. Informal workers in India are organizing, and more research on these movements is desperately needed. Given the lack of research currently available, the following review is based on: the few (often city-level) studies that do exist, organization and union websites, Indian government reports (available on the web), newspaper articles, and my own research since 2003.