The NCEUS proposals address a pressing need in Indian society. At the same time, international experience suggests that social insurance expansion has been a gradual process, closely linked to levels of development, industrialisation and other factors. There is no precedent internationally in open societies of achieving high SI coverage at low levels of income, more so in the timeframe proposed by the NCEUS. An incremental approach which sequences expansion by type of insurance and targeted sub-populations could in contrast achieve more sustainable gains for India's unorganised workers.
