Occupational health in India - Challenges & Opportunities

India is a growing economy, the world’s most vibrant and largest democracy and an aspiring superpower. OSH should be seen as a 'developmental tool' and as an empowering movement.  India has huge population around 1.2 billion with two third population in working ages. More than 90% work in the informal economy, mainly agriculture and services  and less than 10% work in the formal economy; mainly industry, mining and services.  The OSH panorama in India may be summarized as huge workforce in unorganised sector, availability of cheap labour, meagre public spending on health, inadequate implementation of existing legislation, large numbers of unrecognised / unreported occupational illness, relative shortage of trained and skilled OSH professionals, multiplicity of statutory controls, apathy of stakeholders and infrastructure problems. The increasing proportion of females in the workforce adds to the traditional OSH issues. A national policy on OSH at workplace has been recently adopted by the government but it is yet to be implemented.   Occupational health is split between two ministries. While primary health care and medical education fall in the mandate of Health Ministry, the Ministry of Labour has the main responsibility for OSH. The organised sector, both private and public, has well developed OSH based on ILO conventions; however, this sector is miniscule. Liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation have affected working life in India and present new OSH challenges across a diverse range of professions.   The three most important OSH needs are: legislation to extend OSH coverage to all sectors of working life including the unorganised sector; the spread of awareness about OSH among stakeholders; the development of OSH infrastructure and OSH professionals. Other issues include the integration of occupational health with primary health care, appropriate care and protection in cases where hazardous industries are moved from developed countries, and international collaboration.