Socio-Economic Problems of Early Retirement: A Case Study in Durgapur, West Bengal

As part of economic liberalization the Government of India developed a New Industrial Policy. Under the New Industrial Policy, the Government announced an ‘exit’ policy that would substantially modify the Industrial Disputes Act so that along with free entry, the industrial organizations would enjoy the freedom to close-down the unit or retrench the labour force when the management finds it necessary. In both public and private sector, the Government is now encouraging early retirement scheme which was introduced under different schemes with varying terms and conditions. Consequently, a significant section of the workers are forced to accept early-retirement which has widespread impact on the workers, their family members and others dependent on them. In this paper, I set out to study the socio-economic problems that the workers face after forced retirement and its impact on their personal, familial and social life. For this purpose, I chose to study the social costs of forced retirement in one public sector unit, namely Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation in Durgapur, West Bengal which was closed down in 2002. The data for this study have been drawn from observations and interviews. I conducted several informal discussions and unstructured interviews with the workers both individually and on a group basis and later systematically interviewed 200 workers. In many cases, the workers have failed to adjust with post-retirement developments due to lack of prior planning and mental preparation. The absence of social security network has further aggravated the problems of workers who have forced to take early retirement.