Operations and Linkages: A Study of Nagaland’s Urban Informal Sector

Abstract

The urban informal sector has attracted renewed interest in the present day development circle despite the widely held notion in the past three decades that it would shrink once an economy achieved high growth. Due to its enormous capacity to sustain and provide livelihood to the urban poor, it is being reckoned as a significant sector in the economy of developing countries for providing income and alleviating poverty. This sector has its own characteristics that allow us to understand and explain it differently from the formal sector. This paper deals with the structure and characteristics of the urban informal sector in the city of Dimapur and examines the nature of the enterprises, the structure of its employment, capital, turnover and value addition. It also looks into the nature of linkages that it shares with the formal sector.