The Labour and Employment Ministry told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that a global pension index that placed India’s pension system towards the bottom of the list was “not based on reliable comparable international data”.
The report, which came out earlier this year, ranked India 40 out of 43 countries for its pension system.
To a question by DMK MP M. Shanmugam about the report, Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameswar Teli replied: “The said Global Pension Index Report, 2021 has been published by Mercer which is a management consulting firm. The index is prepared based on certain criteria of adequacy, sustainability and integrity. It has placed India in the same category as that of Japan, South Korea and a few other countries. This report is not based on reliable comparable international data and does not recognise every aspect of pension system prevailing in a country.”
Responding to Mr. Shanmugam’s question about what the Government was doing to bring unorganised sector workers under the ambit of a pension system, the Minister said the Government had enacted the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 and launched two pension schemes — the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan and the National Pension Scheme for Traders, Shopkeepers and Self-employed Persons (NPS Traders) in 2019.
