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Skilling Is Alright But How About Employment

Dt:  14/3/16

Skilling Is Alright But How About Employment

Dr T.H.Chowdary*

India’s population went up from under 40 cr in 1951 to  128 cr by now.  It is increasing at the rate of  180 lakhs per year.  There are  three  crore young men and women in the  universities.  About one crore graduates are coming out every year. President Pranab Mukherjee has said that in the  next twenty years, Bharat has to create  44 cr jobs; that is  2.2 cr per year.  Never in the  history of our country have we ever created  more than 80 lakh job per year.  The gap between growth in population and  graduates  on the  one hand and jobs forth coming is  frighteningly great.

2. The  unemployed  especially among the graduates is staggeringly high. Here are some statistics the number  of posts advertised for different grades of employees and the number applying and who are among  those  applicants .

3. It was thought that  the educated are  remaining  unemployed  because of  lack of skills for employability.  So the government  established the  National Skill Development Corporation of  India (NSDCI)  in the year 2013. So far,  its achievements are  - training partners – 267;

training centers – 4,021; people trained = 65,46, 251; people placed = 26,92,168. The reskilled people who found employment as a proportion of the  skill-trained is  41% . The rest though specially skilled have no jobs.

4. It is obvious  that the problem is not only lack of skills but insufficient  job creation. 59% of the skills -trained people also don’t have jobs. Jobs created in  governments  are consumptive  of our finances.  They do not  conduce to  production of wealth.  It is   in agriculture , manufacturing, trade, businesses and in  services that wealth is created.   The amount of investment required for producing  jobs is  becoming higher and higher as  production  and business processes are all  getting automated.  They are information  technology  -intensive and do away with much of human  labour.  So even if huge  amounts are invested  for manufacturing, infrastructure, and  social services as our  political leaders are  claiming as coming from so many countries and so many Indian business houses,  the jobs created  are  not commensurate with  investments made.  In the  age of IT, automation and robots   this is inevitable. 

5. If we are to  find   productive employment for all, we have to restrict the growth of population. It is  noted that  in our country the growth of population is not among the rich or well to do  but  among the poor and  less educated as well as in a section of our population for whom the more the children; the greater their voting  clout.  Compulsory restriction  of child  production  as in China is not  possible in India. One way  of reducing the  growth of population is to restrict the welfare and subsides to families with  one or two children only. The moment a third child comes, every welfare, every assistance, every subsidy  to such family should be  withdrawn.   The  rationale for this is that this country is not  rich but poor and backward and therefore  it cannot afford  welfare payments to ever increasing millions at  the current levels of  the nation’s GDP.  If some people think that god is giving   children to them and that  they themselves are not producing,  then it is to god that they must  turn for help and not to  poor and backward governments in India.

6.  yet another measure to enable people to quit poverty and  become self reliant and have  limited  families is to restrict reservations  ( for government and  PSU employment, admission to educational institutions and other affirmative  actions), to only one or two children  in a family and that too, for two generations only ( father& son and not to grand- sons). This way more of the  disadvantaged  can benefit, instead of some  families  for generations  to come. (622 words + table)