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Population, food
security, education and remunerative employment opportunities are closely
interconnected. Rising levels of education and living standards are powerful
levers for reducing birth and mortality rates. Over the next two decades
India’s greatest challenge will be to expand the opportunities for the
growing labour force, to enrich their knowledge and skills through
education, raise their living standards through gainful employment and make
provisions for ensuring a good life for the aged. India has met the
challenge of producing sufficient food to feed everyone. But it has yet to
meet the challenge of generating sufficient employment opportunities to
ensure that all its people have the purchasing power to obtain the food they
require. Gainful employment is one of the most essential conditions for food
and economic security. Conversely, food security is an essential requirement
for raising the productivity of India’s workforce to international levels .
India’s labour force reached approximately 375 million in 2002, and it will
continue to expand over the next two decades. The actual rate of that
expansion will depend on several factors including population growth, growth
of the working age population, labour force participation rates, educational
enrolment at higher levels and school drop-out rates. Projections based on
these parameters indicate that India’s labour force will expand by 7 to 8.5
million per year in the next six years and will increase by a total of about
160-170 million by 2020, i.e., 2.0 per cent per annum.
The total number of unemployed persons in India has been estimated to be
about 35 million in 2002. This figure takes into account the significant
level of underemployment and seasonal variations in the availability of
work. It also reflects wide variations in the rate of unemployment among
different age groups and regions of the country. Approximately three-fourth
of the unemployed are in rural areas and three-fifth among them are
educated. The recent trends towards shedding excess labour to improve
competitiveness and increasing capital intensity have further aggravated the
situation. A clear consensus is now emerging that major changes in economic
policy and strategy will be needed to meet the country’s employment needs.
Future rates of unemployment will depend on a range of factors, including
the growth rate of the labour force and changes in the structure of
employment between different sectors, as well as the growth rate of the
economy. Adopting the higher number takes us closer to understanding the
full magnitude of the challenge the country faces for providing employment
opportunities for all its people. India needs to generate on the order of
200 million additional employment opportunities over the next 20 years.
The first question that inevitably arises is whether generating nine or ten
million jobs a year is feasible. This naturally raises the question as to
what rates of economic growth would be required for achieving this. However
logical and inevitable it may sound, this is the wrong way to approach the
problem. The right question to ask is: How important is it to us as a nation
to create employment opportunities for all? The answer here is simple. It is
as important to create job opportunities for all citizens in a market
economy as it is to provide universal suffrage to all adults in a democracy.
Access to employment is an essential component of freedom of economic
choice. The absence of such an opportunity means depriving our young not
only of economic freedom but of hope as well. India’s vision for 2020 must
be founded on the premise of gainful jobs for all. Access to employment
should not only be a top priority of the government but a constitutionally
guaranteed fundamental human right.
But can we possibly achieve such an ambitious goal and that too within the
framework of a non-subsidised market economy? In order to answer this
question, first of all we need to recognise that the economy we build over
the next two decades and the jobs we create will be products of the
decisions we make, not some irreversible logic of economic science. It is
we, the nation, that have to decide what we want to accomplish and how
serious we are about doing it, how willing we are to change our attitudes
and to alter our policies to achieve this desirable goal. We conclude that
if the will and determination are present, the goal is achievable.
Achieving full employment will
require a reorientation of national priorities, technology policy and
government action. Until now, planning to achieve national goals has been
largely done on a sector-wise basis by respective ministries assigned with
the responsibility. These parallel lines of planning need to be integrated
around a central vision and set of goals, of which full employment must be
one. As we have incorporated an environmental analysis into all our
planning, every plan initiative needs also to be re-evaluated to consider
its impact on employment.
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