The committee, which has begun working on a second report, will also attempt to quantify the extent of central government liability arising out of pension payments and ways to improve the distribution of pension payments in various states.

The project, Old Age Social and Income Security (OASIS), commissioned by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, will also examine issues involved in setting up a National Senior Citizens Fund, Gautam Bhardwaj, member secretary of the committee and consultant co-ordinator of the project, said. The committee was of the opinion that the unorganised sector and the self-employed class also needed social security provided by the pension schemes, Bhardwaj said.

The committee, in its first report to the government recently, had touched upon the need tobring all the employed class under the pension schemes. Currently 90 per cent of the employee class do not enjoy the social security provided by retirement schemes.

"Bringing the self-employed and daily workers under the social security bracket is important and we are discussing ways to bring them under the pension and provident fund schemes," Bhardwaj added. A lot of awareness has to go to this end so that the self-employed and unorganised sector feel the need to have a social security scheme during their old age, he said.

The panel is also likely to suggest a small contribution from the government to encourage the self-employed class to have retirement schemes. The salaried class having pension schemes currently enjoy tax concessions but since the self-employed do not come under the tax net, it would be difficult to lure them into the pension and provident schemes, he said.