Our biggest imperative as a nation today is to create good jobs that would help our humungous workforce transition out of low-productivity and low-paid agricultural work. 46% of India’s workforce is engaged in agriculture, but the sector contributes just 18% to our GDP. Jobs in manufacturing and services are 3-6 times as productive. When it becomes clear that helping workers move out of agriculture is important for improving the quality of life of our citizens, the fact that this transition hasn’t happened at a pace that is conducive for sustained economic growth compels us to investigate the barriers that are holding us back. In our research, the paucity of worker housing that is safe, affordable and of a decent quality with all the necessary amenities, near factories and industrial clusters, has consistently cropped up as a significant constraint hindering India’s manufacturing growth.

Through this report, we aim to underline how worker housing, if done right, will be a crucial enabler for many things — employment-intensive manufacturing exports, inter-state migration, and female labour force participation — all of which are of great importance in ensuring sustained and broad-based economic growth for India. Our recommendations in this report, which span across both regulatory and financial support for worker housing, aim to help India truly unleash the potential of its manufacturing sector, harness its demographic dividend and most of all, improve the quality of life of every citizen.

To read the full report, click on the link below.