Unemployment: New outlook

After fifty years of Independence and four decades of planned development, still
the Boserup’s hypothesis (1965,81) has not been proved in India that Population Growth
is far from inimical to poverty and environment, increased per capita income and
emergence of public services1. Even today we have many villages in the country where
fruits of development have yet to make inroads. Illiteracy, poor health and hygiene,
unsafe drinking water, lack of technical services and communications for rural poor etc
are still at the threshold of villages and the fruits of development had not reached the
inner areas2. However, adoption of Economic Reforms in the early nineties was certainly
a welcome effort towards eliminating unemployment from Indian Economy as economic
activities were to be multiplied. Policy of privatization though at one point of time scared
the general public of job crisis. But, it was a nice and appreciable step for pulling
economy from the vicious circle of poverty and employment.
Phenomena of economic development states that service sector are the real
indicator of the pulse rate of development in the economy. Any economy with highest
dependence on primary sector cannot be taken as developed/developing economy. Indian
Economy has achieved the status of fast developing economy in the recent past just due
to the fact that its service sector is growing very fast and expansion in the IT services
have make dent in the appreciable success of Indian brain world-vide. Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO) Industry has opened the floodgates for Indian service providers to
utilize the best fruits of expanding and globalize world business. Can one see the dirty
face of unemployment, which was earlier present in Indian under developed economy?
What I mean to say is that the dichotomy of Indian economy is very hard to understand
but it is only the way out to solve the problem of unemployment. Another important and
most significant issue is the type of unemployment prevailing in India. Frictional
unemployment is found in developed economies and disguise unemployment is the
characteristic feature of underdeveloped economies. What type of unemployment we are
talking? Certainly we are not talking about the frictional unemployment though it is also
present today in Indian economy.
It would not be an exaggeration to mention that there is lots of job opportunities
are emerging in India as a result of globalization. However question may be asked
whether Indian youth is ready to access these opportunities. The existing education
system in India prepares an educated sophisticated white-collared dumb but ambitious
stuff who just want to get job with unlimited social and financial security for lifelong
time. The eligibility criterion is just for the sake of screening among the crowd. Such a
system of education does not produce the good stuff that want to perform for today with
few aspirations for his future. This is therefore can be said Indian youth is not ready to
access these opportunities. However, in the last few years, youth studying at the metro-
cities have acknowledged the potential of working in private sector and conclusively;
have modified themselves according to the need of private sector.
Over the years after the inception of WTO and Policy of privatization &
liberalization employment opportunities in public sector are shrinking. Voluntary
retirements and several other things have contributed to huge employee turnover in
Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs). Moreover policy of disinvestments is closing door for
the job bearing high social security. Further, with the globalization of economy,
employment situation in the organized sector is not very encouraging. Consequently,
traditional skills and education would not help aspiring youth to get easy access to
secured jobs without making substantial and concerted efforts.
Youth in twenty first century is passing through transitive India where he is
finding difficult to see across the sparkling and star-studded pictures of leisure and
amusement. At the same time economic reforms are taking entry into second stage where
they will attain speed and pace of economic development will minimize the role of public
sector in the economy to the mere controller and provider of the infrastructure that even
within the collaboration of private sector. Meanwhile, corporate sector and service sector
along with money market shall be expanding at very rapid pace. This will lead to
emergence of new business opportunities and several economic activities, which will in
turn demand new entrepreneurs3. Hence youth with entrepreneurial skill will get the bird.
This is again a very convincing, as one entrepreneur not only employs himself rather
offers service to many.
India is known for the simultaneous existence of organized and unorganized
sector like any developing/underdeveloped country. For all the period after independence
unorganized sector had been the largest job provider for Indian youth. Still this sector
gives job for more than 80 percent of the total workforce in the country 4. In the present
millennium where population of India have crossed the one billion mark, employment
generation in the unorganized sector/private sector is the only option for providing
gainful employment to the millions of youth. The ample requirement to easily find job in
private sector is to have access to proper identification of vocations, appropriate
competency based skill learning and training in these vocations. Training at polytechnics
and other similar institutions would certainly provide good niche for the easy
employment for youth from rural and backward areas.
References:
1. Mehrotra, P.N.: ‘Transforming Poor Communities into Sustainable
Communities: Contours of Environmental Policy in Information Age’, Planning and
Development Unit (Planning Commission, GOI), Department of Economics, University
of Allahabad, Allahabad, April 2002.
2. Baluswami, N.: ‘Upliftment of Rural Youth’, part of lecture at NSS camp,
Bharathihar University, Coimbatore, 2002.
3. Lal, Ratan: ‘Unemployed youth should be an entrepreneur’, Yojna, March 2002.
4. Jain, A.K.: ‘Employment Generation through Community Polytechnics’,
Kurukshetra, November 2002.