Growth or decline? Understanding non-agricultural informal enterprises

Efforts at providing robust data for unorganised sector, which plays an important role in livelihood and survival of the poor, has so far been half-hearted, producing no comparable evidence over time

Informal sector enterprises have been a defining feature of the Indian economy. While activities like agriculture, fisheries, livestock in the primary sector remain predominantly household-based informal enterprises, a large segment of non-agricultural activities are also in the informal or unorganised sector. It is unfortunate that the official coverage of these enterprises is somewhat patchy and reflects problems of temporal and cross-sectional comparability. Understanding of the size and contribution of these activities is mainly based on nationwide sample surveys of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). 

In the regular scheme of surveys, these are carried out once every