Renjini Rajagopalan

What does it truly take for a rural young woman in India to access and sustain formal work? This report by JustJobs Network and PRADAN traces women's journeys from aspiration to employment, uncovering the social norms, family negotiations, and institutional gaps that shape their path beyond just skills training — and what governments, training partners, and employers must do differently.

India's welfare state is held together by over five million women, namely the ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers, and mid-day meal workers & helpers, who deliver essential public services daily, yet remain classified as 'volunteers', denied fair wages, formal contracts, and basic protections. This is no accident: with women already spending nearly twice as much time on caregiving as men, the state has long relied on deeply entrenched gender norms to keep care work cheap and informal. In this piece Renjini Rajagopalan makes the case for why it's time to move beyond the honorary label and recognise care work for what it truly is: work.

In a landmark shift, the Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Dharam Singh & Anr. v. State of UP & Anr. declared that "perennial work deserves perennial posts". Breaking from decades of judicial precedent, the court held that long-serving daily wage workers in government service performing essential, continuous functions must be regularised, with full employment benefits. The judgment directly challenges past rulings that treated temporary government employment as inherently non-regularisable, instead emphasizing the nature and continuity of the work as central to constitutional fairness.

India is advancing social security for online gig workers, but this marks only a reactive step in addressing the evolving nature of informal work. JJN’s Renjini Rajagopalan writes for The Hindu highlighting the need for a more inclusive, universal social protection system to ensure no worker is left behind, especially as new worker categories emerge.