The 7th Foundation Day Lecture of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) was successfully hosted on March 6, 2025, at the B.P.R. Vithal Auditorium, Hyderabad. Prof. E. Revathi, Director, CESS, warmly welcomed the speaker, Prof. Santosh Mehrotra, and the chair of the lecture, Prof. J. Mahender Reddy, along with faculty members, students, academicians, and the press.
Prof. J. Mahender Reddy, Distinguished Advisor, ICFAI Society, Hyderabad, provided valuable insights into the significance of the discussion. In her address, Prof. E. Revathi highlighted the growth of CESS as a leading research organization and the importance of the CESS Foundation Day Lecture in fostering academic discourse on critical socio-economic issues.
Prof. Santosh Mehrotra, Research Fellow, IZA Institute of Labour Economics, Bonn, Germany delivered the lecture on “Can India Universalize Social Insurance before its Demographic Dividend Ends”? His lecture focused on informal workforce accounting to 91% which lacks social insurance. According to ILO terminology, the social security system consists of two parts: social insurance and social assistance. Social insurance includes old-age pensions, disability or work-related injury benefits, and maternity benefits. India will become an aging society as the demographic dividend will end by 2040. Only 12 percent of Indians are currently covered by a formal pension scheme. As a result, most of the nearly five million Indians who join the ranks of the elderly every year are vulnerable in old age. Thus, there is an urgent need to ensure that the nearly 550 million lacking social insurance have access to maternity benefits, death or disability insurance or access to pensions. It is proposed to put in place a Social Insurance system, which is part non-contributory for the extremely poor and part contributory for the non-poor. The total government cost of providing social insurance to the poor unorganized sector workers/the non-contributory dimension has been estimated at 0.69 percent of GDP or 137 Lakh crore rupees for the country. This amount is comparable with the central government’s annual total expenditure under all heads of approximately 34 lakh crore rupees in 2019-20. Moreover, the costs would decline with each year as a share of GDP to 0.61% after 5 years. The lecture has given a roadmap to cover entire workforce in the next 10 to 15 years, in accordance with the International Labour Organization Conventions, well before India’s demographic dividend ends.
The lecture concluded with a vote of thanks, marking the successful completion of the event.