With a monthly salary of Rs 40,000, life was a party for Amit Singh, 23. The future seemed bright too a training programme abroad, more foreign travel and a higher salary. Life couldn't be better for the young man from Dehradun, who arrived here last year armed with a marketing degree. But, things changed overnight. In April, he was asked to leave, a month's salary in hand. Amit had no savings. "I have been borrowing money from my father and I am living with a friend for the past two months." With no money, no job and no support from his company, Amit's only source of financial and emotional support is his family. "The government must give us some allowance to sustain ourselves." Many of my friends who could not afford to live here have gone back to their homes in small cities. "I may do the same if I don't get a job soon," says Amit.

JIGNESH, research analyst

There was a time Jignesh* used to liken his work to the British Empire. The 29-yearold, who monitored global markets for a living, worked round the clock. When his family complained, he would simply say: "The sun never sets on my desk." Now, in these new hard times, the darkest night shows no sign of ending. Jignesh, sole bread-winner of his family of four, has been out of work since January, when the hedge fund for which he worked shut shop. An MBA, he has been looking for a new job. But, there are none to be found. Jignesh and his wife and parents are living on his father's savings. His father worked in a public sector bank. "I am even ready to move out of the area in which I have worked for so long. I may get the salary of a fresher, but I feel something is better than nothing." Jignesh has asked everyone he knows but he is still struggling to find a decent job.

More than 60 countries worldwide provide some form of unemployment insurance. It is part of a larger social welfare commitment, which includes retirement and old age pension, sickness and maternity benefits. Often, affordable housing and education are part of the package. It is not just advanced economies that provide social welfare, though the richer countries have the most comprehensive systems. Several South American and African countries also offer their people some form of social welfare.

In the past two decades, governments have retreated from social welfare spending, making the transition from `insurance' to `assistance'. But industrialized countries still spend anything between 15% and 30% of their GDP on social security such as unemployment benefit, pension and healthcare. Yet India, one of the more advanced developing countries, barely manages to spend about 1% of its GDP on social services. Guy Standing, professor of economic security at the University of Bath in Britain, says India has one of the world's lowest levels of social welfare expenditure and even that is mostly wasted. "What is perhaps most worrying in India is that politicians use social protection schemes cynically to boost their political prospects, so that they can show discretionary benevolence, particularly just before elections," he told TOI.

The need for social security is greater in the developing world than in the developed. The developing world's concept of social security needs to be expanded -- it has to include the aim of eliminating mass poverty, ill-health and illiteracy because without this social security cannot exist. In India, there are additional obstacles, such as caste discrimination. Given the scale of these problems, social welfare spending is at a rudimentary level in most developing countries including India.

Although the law recognizes various rights, such as livelihood, these are not enforceable. In a belated attempt to rectify this, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was adopted in 2006 but it only provides for a maximum of 100 days of manual labour in a year at the minimum wage. Perhaps a fatal flaw in India's social security framework is that it only covers the organized sector, which accounts for just 8% of the workforce. The vast majority of Indian workers are in the unorganized sector. Some half-hearted attempts were made to bring them under some sort of social security coverage by passing a law in December.

For India to progress, policy has to be boldly refocused on providing social security, including a safety net for when one loses one's job. As Guy Standing puts it, "We have found in Africa that when you provide low-income people with a little money without conditions, they mostly spend it in the best interests of their families and communities. They do not need to be told or led to do what state bureaucrats think is what they should do.