Sri Lanka, June 15 -- If there is an informal economy in this country, who runs it? Every country has an informal economy, and Sri Lanka's is particularly large. Around 5.5 million of the 8.2 million employees in the country function in the informal economy. This statistic should boggle the mind.

That's a whopping 67 percent of the workforce, according to recent statistics. This is around two-thirds of all the people who work, who are not protected by labour laws, and do not function within the legal framework that safeguards employee rights.

Who employs all these people who constitute this so-called informal-workforce? Statistics indicate that a great many of them are employed in agriculture. Records also show that a certain proportion...