Urban employment scheme called Decentralized Urban Employment and Training (DUET) was introduced by the economist Jean Dreze . Under the scheme, State or Union government  would issue “job stamps”, each standing for one day of work at the minimum wage. The job stamps would be liberally distributed to approved public institutions such as universities, hostels, schools, hospitals, health centres, museums, libraries, shelters, jails, offices, departments, railway stations, transport corporations, public-sector enterprises, neighborhood associations and urban local bodies. 

These institutions would be free to use the stamps to hire labour for odd jobs and small projects that do not fit easily within their existing budgets and systems.

Wages, paid by the government, would go directly to the workers’ accounts against job stamps certified by the employer. 

This scheme has some advantages like,  activating a multiplicity of potential employers, avoiding the need for special staff, facilitating productive work . It has potential to  ensure secure entitlement to minimum wages, and possibly other benefits for workers . 

 Many States have  problems of dismal maintenance of public premises , DUET could provide alternative solution for it. 

To avoid collusion, an independent placement agency would take charge of assigning workers to employers.

The scheme may incorporate some skilled workers to ensure win win situation for employers and consumer citizens. This may result in widening and diversification of possible employment opportunities.  

So there is a possible need of training programmes in the scheme . It would also help to impart ‘an on the job’ training component in the scheme,as they work alongside skilled workers. 

Attracting skilled workers, may required to pay a fair amount of work in urban areas . 

Here is a variant of DUET  where there is no thinking of a minimum quota for women, like the one-third quota under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), but of an absolute priority: as long as women workers are available, they get all the work. In fact, women could also run the placement agencies, or the entire programme for that matter. 

To facilitate women’s involvement, most of the work could be organized on a part-time basis.  It would give them some economic independence and bargaining power within the family, and help them to acquire new skills.  

Giving priority to women would have two advantages . First, it would reinforce the self-targeting feature of DUET, because women in relatively well-off households are unlikely to go for casual labour at the minimum wage. Second, it would promote women’s general participation in the labour force. India has one of the lowest rates of female workforce participation in the world. 

The will of the public institution to make active use of the job stamps will be an important aspect of DUET.  

There is a big difference between DUET and the “service voucher” schemes that have proved so popular in some European countries. The service vouchers are used by households instead of public institutions, for the purpose of securing domestic services such as cooking and cleaning in cheaper rates. 

The service vouchers are not free, but  are highly subsidized, and households have an advantage  to use them in buying domestic services at cheaper rates .  

In the DUET scheme, the use of job stamps relies on a sense of responsibility among the heads of public institutions, not their self-interest ,So the effective use of job stamps is uncertain.  According to Jean Dreze, the best possible way will be the implementation of a pilot scheme in selected districts or in  municipalities. 

DUET’s  scheme has a simple functional  design, and has potential  to be implemented with available  administrative arrangements. It can use local employing agencies, instead of just the Urban Local Bodies (ULB), which might  be uncertain about generation of  work in required amounts.  

 Role of worker cooperatives  can be potential and effective  ‘placement agencies’ under the scheme. It can play an important role in  ending the monopoly  of labour contractors in urban areas.  

DUET needs to incorporate dedicated budgets for non-labour costs, or fiscal constraints may prevent it from starting in the first place.

Migrants can be the mostly potential beneficiary of the scheme , may be not having any fixed urban address, domicile or residence proof, so it should not be made mandatory. 

workers under the programme must be provided with basic rights such as equal wages for women and men, worksite facilities, insurance and compensation for accidents/injuries, compensation for delays in wage payments, mandatory disclosure of information related to the implementation of the scheme, and provisions for social audit.

The role of the Public Works Department (PWD) needs to be designed properly in relevance with the scheme as,  repair and maintenance of public institutions is the administrative jurisdiction of the PWD in every state. 

At present, state government allocates funds for urban public projects such as the maintenance of government buildings, and selects a few applications from amongst the applicants given their budget. Under DUET, the allocative and selection decision would still be in the hands of the state government. 

The National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) could possibly play a role in DUET as well. 

 Several states have already launched urban employment programmes in response to the pandemic. In addition to Odisha’s Urban Wage Employment Initiative (UWEI) and Himachal’s Mukhyamantri Shahri Aajeevika Guarantee Yojana (Chief Minister Urban Livelihood Guarantee Programme), the latest one is Jharkhand’s Mukhyamantri Shramik Yojana (Chief Minister Workers Programme). While it is early days yet to say much about the impact of these schemes, Kerala’s Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme has been running for a few years already and can provide some lessons for the way forward.