Around one-third of the informal workers in urban area earn less than the minimum wage stipulated for unskilled workers. Ten percent of employed workers are working poor, and around 27% are vulnerable workers. In total, around 37% (39 million) workers are either poor or vulnerable to working poor. The government’s failure to reduce this wage inequality and ensure even a bare minimum wage to a large chunk of the urban informal workers of whom the majority are Dalit, Adivasi, and Other Backward Class during the normalcy is strongly linked to the massive exodus of the urban informal workers to their native places during the COVID-19 pandemic.
