A reccent PTI report, which cited a survey by Labour Bureau, said country’s unemployment rate has shot up to a 5-year high of 5 percent in 2015-16. This figure is significantly higher, at 8.7 percent, for women as compared to 4.3 percent for men. About 77 percent of Indian households do not have regular wage/salaried person.
Here, one needs to look at the previous years’ numbers to understand how serious is the 2015-16 figure. India’s unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in 2013-14, 4.7 percent in 2012-13), 3.8 percent in 2011-12 and 9.3 percent in 2009-10. There was no report from Labour Bureau in 2014-15. And the situation is not looking better going ahead.
A World Bank research has showed that automation threatens 69 percent of the jobs in India. With the use of more technology, the pattern of traditional economic path in developing countries could be fundamentally disrupted, the report noted.
That’s not all.
Asia-Pacific Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this year gives a strong warning on the level of unemployment in the country. According to the report between 1991 and 2013 India could provide employment only to less than half of the new entrants into the job market. “The the size of the working-age population increased by 300 million (during the period), while the number of employed people increased by only 140 million — the economy absorbed less than half the new entrants into the labour market. A wider gap in India than China suggests a more limited capacity to generate employment — a serious challenge given the continued expansion of the workforce in India over the next 35 years,” the report said.
The increasing unemployment rate, as seen in the above mentioned numbers, thus raises questions on the quality of GDP growth India, Modi and his ministers often talk about. This has been the case in the recent years.
Why such high rate of joblessness? Lack of private investments to set up new factories and small-scale companies could be one reason. Increasing mechanisation and companies focusing more on higher efficiency as a measure to increase output, without hiring new staff, could be second. India’s archaic labour laws could be acting as a major turn off for the employers to hire new staff could be the third.
One thing is evident. Much of the GDP growth India has seen has come from consumption, rather than fresh private investments. This takes away the sheen from the GDP growth. That a jobless economic growth doesn’t really contribute to the country’s prosperity is something most economists agree. The big question before the government therefore is does it have a plan to accommodate the younger workforce? The efficacy of various initiatives launched by the Modi government since 2014, to name a few, Make in India, Start Up India, Skill India, needs to be introspected. Have these schemes begun to contribute to job creation in a significant way? If not, why? The current scenario of unemployment cannot sustain.
India is one of the best sources of quality human resources to the world. Higher education isn’t scarce, jobs are. Lakhs of engineers, doctors and other professionals who flow in need to be accommodated in the workforce. The overburdened public sector system certainly cannot solely absorb the new work force. The private sector needs to play a major role.
The short point here is that all these figures tell us why the hoopla over the 7.6 percent growth figure and the status of world’s fastest growing economy status makes not much sense to most of India’s 125 crore people, who are the aspiring middle class, migrating to urban centres from India’s villages hoping better jobs and income.
Till the time higher growth doesn’t translate into higher number of jobs and better income for the aspiring middle class, China-beating economic growth or India being the centre-stage of the world are merely feel-good ideas on the paper for majority of India’s aam aadmi. This can eventually lead to unrest and negative sentiments. A jobless economic growth could thus, potentially, spoil Narendra Modi’s dream run in 2019.
Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.
