Research Team: Utkarsh Saxena, Ananya Kotia, Robin Burgess

Funded By: India Sustainable Growth Hub (ISGH)

Description: The study seeks to digitize historical plant-level data from India from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) for research purposes. The project focuses on ASI Part II, which contains monthly labor-related data such as working days, absenteeism, labor turnover, earnings, and social security benefits. These records, covering the period 1960–2005, are stored in over 175 magnetic tapes and 25 floppy disks available with the Labor Bureau archives. Since the Labor Bureau does not have the equipment to read these tapes, the project aims to digitize and preserve this valuable data and later make it freely accessible to researchers through the Labor Bureau’s data portal. The digitized data will help researchers study industrial labor trends, seasonality, weather shocks, and long-term plant-level analysis in India.