Aims and Objectives
Globalisation has led to increasing informalisation of work in the developing countries, whereby workers have less access to social protection. On the one hand flexible, precarious and insecure forms of work with greater health risks have increased. On the other hand, safety and protection systems designed for formal workplaces and workers in the formal sector are often inaccessible to informal workers. Moreover, in many developing countries, governments have been compelled to limit welfare programmes including health services through public expenditure. This has increased health insecurities and vulnerability for majority of the workers in the developing countries.
In India where a large number of people are poor and depend on the informal sector for their livelihood, providing horizontal equity in terms of health protection and benefits becomes a challenge. In order to address these key issues of health protection and its interlinkages with the world of work, the Centre for Labour and Health Studies has been set up in V.V. Giri National Labour Institute. This specialised Centre focuses on understanding and addressing emerging health challenges confronting workers in a globalised economy. The core research areas of the centre are as follows:
Core Research Areas of the Centre
- New forms of employment and emerging health risks and patterns of morbidity
- Labour market transformations and its challenges to health security
- Understanding access to health and health behaviour: caste, class, ethnicity and gender interfaces
- Public health care delivery systems and its impact.
- Role of social insurance in providing health protection.
Research Advisory Group
The Research Advisory Group of the Centre comprises of the following members:
- Prof Prof. Ritu Priya Mehrotra, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
- Prof. Indrani Gupta, Health Policy Research Unit, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, New Delhi.
- Prof. P.M. Kulkarni, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
- Prof. Sanjay Zodpey, Director, Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi.
Major Research Projects completed/initiated recently
- Evaluation Study of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) - A Study of Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Punjab 18
- Changing Land Utilisation Patterns in the Tea Plantation Sector in West Bengal: Few Policy Imperatives
- Workplace Health and Safety: A Study of Select Small-Scale Industrial Units in Delhi
- Impact of MGNREGA on the Living Conditions of Unorganized Workers in Rural Areas
- Women’s Labour in the Tea Sector: Changing Roles, Trajectories and Emerging Concerns.
Centre Coordinator