Essays

India, with a vast population of over 1,000 million individuals, is facing the biggest problem of the century in the form of unemployment of worthy and productive citizens. This includes unemployment and under-employment of the young and the old. This results in low productivity and nil or very low incomes. This also leads to the further degradation of household standards and poverty is perpetuated. There is a net loss of national income and the economy suffers on account of low productivity. Add to this, the violent measures taken up by the youth, agitations and individual frustration, which reaches a new pinnacle every day. According to the latest estimates, there are 37.6 million people on the streets and seek employment in one form or the other. There is an addition of 7 million people to this figure every year.

A leisure oriented and unemployed person is a burden on his family and society. The unemployed man eschews all the morals and becomes a rebel. Some young person’s take to drugs and illegal means of making money. Therefore, one menace leads to another and the unemployed person gets caught in a quagmire of crises.

Unemployment is more prominent in urban areas than it is in rural India. Unemployment or under-employment levels for women are higher than those for men. Further, the educated individuals tend to be more unemployed or underemployed than their illiterate counterparts. According to current estimates, 12 per cent of educated individuals are unemployed whereas overall unemployment percentage is 3.77 per cent. It has also been noticed that the unemployment rates rise with every successive higher level of education.

Unemployment has two aspects — rural unemployment and urban unemployment. Rural unemployment is either seasonal or disguised. Seasonal unemployment in rural area results due to crop rotation and disguised unemployment is the underemployment due to the lack of proper opportunities at the rural level. Urban unemployment is either industrial or educated unemployment. The industry refuses to accept engineers, chartered accountants, management graduates and other technically trained professionals who arrive from rural or semi-rural backgrounds. The educated unemployed are the individuals who are either unemployed due to their high qualifications or are underemployed as a result of the wrong job profiles they are in. In either case, frustration forces them to shift to a new job, which could make them either underemployed or unemployed.

According to the Planning Commission and National Sample Survey, the number of unemployed is highest in the age group of 19 to 26 years. The total number of unemployed persons in India today is nearly 380 lakh.

Some of the measures taken by the State have been appended as follows:—

(1) The State is encouraging labour-intensive industry so that more individuals could be employed.

(2) The emphasis is being laid on agriculture, agro-based industries and cottage industries. The small scale industries also fall under this category.

(3) A number of employment programmes have been initiated - IRDP, JRY, HRY, SEPVP are some of the main Programmes by the government.

(4) Vocational education is being stressed upon to eliminate the unemployment menace. A young graduate, who has studied Shakespeare, would do no good in an office, which expects him to know Microsoft Windows 98, word processing and efficient file handling. That is why the graduate immigrants can find Jobs only as peons in the cities. Vocational education can make them adept at one particular skill so that they could start contributing from day one.

(5)  Many of the unemployed individuals are from backward classes. State employs them through special recruitment drives the newspapers and magazines advertise these vacancies regularly. "Employment News" reflects this effort of the government.

(6)   State Governments have set up Employment Generation Councils, which look after the employment needs of their respective districts.

(7) The Ninth Five Year Plan lays adequate stress on the measures for reducing the already high unemployment levels in the country.

The measures taken during the Eighth Five Year Plan were supposed to result in GDP growth of 56 per cent during the plan period. The total number of employment opportunities created was nearly 9 million during the Eighth Five Year Plan. If the target for Ninth Five Year Plan is implemented properly, we could see 9.5 million employment opportunities during the next few years. Thus unemployment levels could reduce to negligible levels by the year 2002.                         

Private sector jobs must be made open to the needy and not-so-deserving candidates on human grounds. Physically and mentally handicapped persons-already being looked after by    the central and state employment agencies must be given adequate opportunities in the private sector as well.           

Another aspect of unemployment is the lure of the good standards of life in the cities. A son of a farmer, who could     work hard in his village and could even own a car, goes to the nearest city and finds himself a job of a clerk or a sales executive. This trend is not healthy. If the entire population migrates to the cities, who would manage our agriculture, which is the oldest and time-tested profession.

The State must contribute by launching more infrastructure-based projects and core sector units. The wasted crop lands should be cultivated and should be issued only to the landless unemployed people. Private sector should launch more process industries, which employ large, number of skilled and semi- skilled people in the rural areas. Going abroad is a profitable proposition only for the computer programmers, engineers, nurses, paramedical staff and skilled labourers. Others could find better opportunities in India as grass is no longer greener in the West and the Middle East.

The present state of Indian economy does not offer good opportunities on the employment front. However, it is expected that the budget proposed by the Finance Minister —Mr Yashwant Sinha— would go a long way in removing the unemployment problems of the masses. The industrial growth rate was 6.2 per cent during 1999-2000. Our Finance Minister hopes that the economy would revive after a brief period of uncertainties. Unemployment would be eliminated only if the industry and business, of the nation pick up. During April- December, 1999, Indian economy has shown signs of improvement.

Further, the Finance Minister has laid more thrust on the rural and agricultural sectors in his budget speech. These areas could generate a good number of tin' sell-employment opportunities for the rural masses. Hence, migration to cities could be checked. The unemployed youth would try to remain at their villages or home towns.

Finally, the State must sponsor schemes for small scale entrepreneurship for the semi-illiterate and the alliterate people. Already, many schemes are in vogue but these need to be tuned to the needs of the unemployed. Red tape and corruption in government departments prevent the funds from being granted to the needy entrepreneurs.

The youth should start small enterprises or manufacturing units of their own with the help of funds from the central and state funding agencies as well as from Rural Regional Banks. They would also be able to give employment to a few more persons if they become entrepreneurs. We must conclude by stating that unemployment issue must be tackled with utmost care and seriousness as it has already assumed alarming proportions in the social and economic scenario us of our nation.