Undoing Unemployment

While employing children for earning wages is unlawful according to the land’s law prohibiting child labour across the country, not landing a job bringing an income to sustain oneself in life for any adult is nightmarish. In a certain sense, keeping certain sections in society out of contention, in preference to certain other sections, in matters of jobs in the government and admission to educational institutions, particularly those offering professional courses, by citing Constitution, sounds not only incongruous but also borders on anachronism. The issue of thus discriminating one set of the country’s people from another set is one way to assume heightened extent of not treating all citizens as equal on various counts, given the call from some quarters to extend the discriminatory system to privately owned industrial establishments. The reason and justification for discrimination have been commented upon by many in the analyst fraternity as being outlived their purpose in present times.

Framing policies relating to employment creation and providing houses to the unsheltered covering the steadily increasing population of the country are marked by not only paucity of reliable demographic data but also their outdated nature. National Sample Survey Organisation, the country’s official agency to provide data on these two most important sectors of the economy reportedly conducted its last employment survey in 2012.

Sources in most of the departments in both the Union government and governments of the 36 States and Union Territories of the country make it a point to highlight shortage of staff by quoting figures of the number on their rolls and also the sanctioned staff strength, with the yawning gap expanding on a monthly basis due to retirement by superannuation. Given the steadily rising outgo of money from the exchequer to pay salaries to serving staff and pension to the retried personnel, proposing job-creation in government departments to undo unemployment doesn’t sound prudent. In the backdrop of more than one crore people entering the country’s workforce every year, creating jobs of that number in the population is a daunting challenge. The task is rendered harder to address in the light of the agriculture sector witnessing an exodus of workers from its headcount of about 220 million.

Measures of skill development under government aegis, supporting building construction sector which currently engages 25 million workers by enlarging to rural parts and extending credit to labour-intensive enterprises, according to knowledgeable analysts of the economy hold the highest promise of undoing unemployment.