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| Conundrum of Unemployment in India | | | Dr. Pragya Khanna
Times of India, 16th Sep., 2015: Height of joblessness: 23 lakh applications for 368 peon posts in UP!!!
This is startling! Recently, in UP more than 23 lakh persons applied against 368 posts of peons in the state secretariat. The number is almost half the population of Lucknow, which is 45 lakhs. What is even more shocking is that over two lakh applicants were at least graduate with B. Tech, B.Sc, M.Sc and M.Com degrees, while 255 candidates were with a PhD degree in hand.
And not so long ago, HT's Chandigarh edition carried a story, which said that among the 16,000 applicants who were interviewed for 21 posts of court peons, there were 40 jobless post-graduates who had applied for those posts that required formal education of up to only the eighth grade.
The Census data released recently show that unemployment in the country, especially among the youth, is very high, averaging nearly 20 per cent for the age group of 15-24 years. In some States like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the unemployment rate is above 25 per cent. Prosperous States like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra have averages that are less than half of the national average.
The reason for unemployment as established by many social/political reformers, NGOs, theorists, logicians is the lack of quality of education given to the young minds and/or lack of opportunities. India has more than 71,000 pre-degree colleges and senior secondary schools, 25,938 colleges for professional educational and 436 universities. These are in addition to the nearly 14 lakh schools in the country for a population of 25 crore children in the age group of 5-14 years. In such a scenario it is quite difficult to understand the limitations in providing the type of quality of education to the youth as is desired or is deemed necessary to compete at the global level.
In fact India has experienced a higher education revolution in the past few decades, with the number of young people completing University degrees rising from a few hundred thousand a year to many millions. This dramatic expansion of University education should have provided new graduates with opportunities unheard of in their parents' generation. However, rising joblessness among new university graduates is creating an army of educated unemployed that some fear could destabilise this huge economy.
With an alarming rise in the number of unemployed and under-employed graduates, a large group of educated young people are becoming alienated, unable to become part of the growing middle class. In India one in three graduates up to the age of 29 is unemployed, according to a Labour Ministry report released last November. Total unemployment in the country is officially closer to 12%. Universities and colleges turn out five million new graduates each year. The data is staggering.
Creating new jobs is a crucial task and plays an important role in the economy. Drop in the financial market hits job market and creates unemployment. India has the largest population of youth in the world with about 66% of the population under the age of 35, so impact of declining financial market is the worst in India. Though education level in the recent years has increased but skill development is still a crucial issue.
Unemployment not only has financial impact but also has many social impacts like increase in cases of theft, violence and other criminal activities. And not to forget poverty which is directly linked with unemployment as well as inequality.
First thing that strikes everyone whenever the question of unemployment is raised is our rapid growth of population. The employment opportunities that are getting created in our country are not able to keep pace with our population growth. According to United Nations population report, India with its annual population growth of 1.65 percent is the largest contributor to the world's population growth, which accounts for 21 percent of the annual increase in the world population and China is in the second position with a contribution of 15 percent.
Secondly, our system of education prepares our youth mostly for the white collared jobs. With no work experience and unprepared for the challenges of work, many employers are reluctant to hire these first time job seekers. The current education system does not lay much emphasis on the vocational education. Although a National Policy on Education has been adopted by giving high priority to vocational courses alongside secondary education, but the quality of these vocational courses must be monitored and should be in pace with the global state of affairs. The Government of India has initiated a number of programs that are meant to enhance the entrepreneurship amongst the youth and also train them accordingly but the Govt. must look into it much more seriously and there should be a continuous monitoring mechanism to evaluate the implementation of these programmes.
Third significant aspect is that agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy. The Government must carry on its policy towards the encouragement of agriculture and development of agriculture-based industries. This will bring to an end the problem of migration from the rural areas to urban areas.
Moreover, in order to check the rural migration to urban areas, there is a pressing need for the development of the small towns' intermediate cities. This will alleviate the pressure on the urban cities and such reorganization and relocation helps in the development and use of the vast unutilized markets within the country rather than unwarranted reliance upon the report activities.
Today, because of the liberalization of the economy, we can see a new lot of foreign companies investing in our country and our Govt. has been promoting this on a large scale. We must encourage foreign companies to start their manufacturing units in our country, which in turn, would increase the employment opportunities.
At the moment the latest mantra in India is that of Business Process Outsourcing and Call Centres. As this has got the largest pool of English speaking scientific and talented manpower it has become an obvious choice for the foreign companies to outsource their non-core business processes to our country. These sectors have started facing a typical problem. Despite large numbers of educated young, there is shortage of skilled manpower. A recent survey throws light on the problem where the educated youth of the country are mainly lacking three types of skills required in the industries. According to the survey, while in interview approximately sixty percent candidates are screened due to lack of communication skills. Rest twenty five percent are screened for analytical skills and five percent for their lack of knowledge in their respective domain. Hence, ninety percent of educated youth force is lacking in one of these three main skills required for job and employment. Only ten percent of educated force of India is employable. The one point solution of the problem is a change in education system, a radical change. There must be an interface between the Government bodies looking after education, Universities, All India Committee of Technical Education and representatives of the industries. The institutes must educate as per industries' needs to increase the employability as per the requirement of the global market.
The slogan 'Make in India' can only become true if Indian people have enough and adequate skills to support its industries. Skill development program will certainly increase employability of Indian youth. |
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