Close to 90 per cent of India's working population belongs to the unorganized sector, people who are typically poor, consumption deprived and socially vulnerable. During the last two decades, even while the number of people below the official poverty line has reduced, the number of people consuming less than INR 30 per day has increased within the informal sector. A majority of people working in the informal sector are rural migrants who come to the city in search of livelihood because of dwindling opportunities in the villages. India's sprawling cities are able to absorb many of them because of the booming construction sector as well as an increasing tendency among Indian corporations to outsource their non-core activities. However, in the cities, the migrant labourers face hostile conditions and the wages they receive are grossly inadequate to make ends meet. Thus, if India wants to solve its poverty and inequality problem, it needs to squarely address the needs of informal sector workers. LabourNet, a for-profit social enterprise, is trying to address these needs. M. Gayathri, the Managing Director of LabourNet, noted,

ORIGIN AND EARLY DAYS

The roots of LabourNet lay in MAYA (Movement for Alternatives and Youth Awareness), a Bengaluru-based NGO founded in 1989 with the intention of dealing with the problem of child labour. MAYA wanted to send children working in the streets back to school and its founders along with volunteers spent the next several years spreading awareness among children, youth and communities about the evils of child labour and enrolled working and street children into non-formal education schools.