The Editorial Analysis: At the Centre of Job Creation

Table of Contents

Unemployment in India: Relevance

GS 3 Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

Recently, the PM has announced that 10 lakh government jobs will be provided over the next 18 months on a “mission mode”.

One, the creation of employment is indeed a problem and can no longer be hidden from the public discourse.
Two, the private sector, especially modern sectors such as the service and manufacturing sectors, have not created many jobs.
Three, the government in the Nehruvian scheme of development occupied an important place in the labour market.
And four, the NDA government has blown the 2024 general election bugle.

Last year for which we have information on employment in the organised sector from the Directorate General of Employment and Training is 2012.
The present government is at present relying on the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation/National Pension System/Employees’ State Insurance Scheme registrations and exits as indicators of the formal labour market.
This could be misleading as companies may be increasing registrations to cross the threshold to become eligible to fall under any of these. Hence, this might be more a case of formalisation rather than employment generation.

Media reports show that more than 85% of those aspiring for those 10 lakh jobs could be consumed by existing vacancies in Central government departments (8,72,243).
In that sense, the pr1onouncement possibly does not indicate 10 lakh new jobs.

Third, 241 central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) have been shedding jobs in recent years — jobs declined from 10.84 lakh in 2017-18 to 10.71 lakh in 2018-19 and to 9.22 lakh in 2019-20.

The private sector creates jobs in response to market forces and while taking into consideration radically altering technological developments.
Projects in the modern private sector consume a lot of capital to generate very few jobs.

The government should re-establish its role as the principal employment generator through jobs in its ministries and CPSEs and through assured employment generation programmes like MGNREGA.

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