Joblessness just too serious to ignore

There’s nothing more disappointing than being a grown-up without a job and remaining dependent on ageing parents for all your needs. Millions of Indian youngsters will surely have gone through this despairing experience and many more millions are doomed to face the same plight unless something is urgently done to address the unemployment crisis in India.

On Friday, Prime Minister Modi gave away appointment letters to 71,426 applicants in various government departments and this has taken the total number of such appointments made since October last year to 2.17 lakh. The Congress party was quick to hit back claiming that there are 30 lakh vacant posts in government departments and hauled the government over the coals for promising 16 crore jobs in the eight years it has been in power and reneging on the assurance.

Not that government departments are where most Indians work and aspire to – the majority are employed in the unorganised sector and a good proportion dare to strike out on their own becoming self-employed rather than wait and wait for a government job, which takes years to fructify. But joblessness is still a gnawing problem – a BBC report that highlighted how chronic unemployment has become in today’s India, pointed to a recent incident when 10,000 jobless people turned up for interviews for 15 semi-skilled government jobs in Madhya Pradesh.

And what is most disconcerting is that many of them were over-qualified for the jobs on offer – they were post-graduates, graduates and MBAs. This goes to prove how acute the job crisis has become particularly for the highly educated. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate grew to nearly 8 per cent in December 2022 proving that piecemeal measures will not suffice and what’s needed is a massive employment push to provide jobs to our worthy youngsters.

Nor was there any heart-warming news forthcoming from the private sector in the country – most companies have started tightening their belts with latest reports indicating that Google and Swiggy have also decided to shed weight in the light of difficult economic circumstances. The trimming efforts are likely to continue relentlessly as companies take stock of their profitloss figures and financial prospects in the light of the new global situation. There are even fears of a looming recession sometime later this year, which calls for firefighting measures on a massive scale.

But sadly, other than token efforts like providing employment to a few thousand people at Rozgar Melas, the measures taken by the Centre as far as tackling joblessness is concerned, have been far from reassuring. On the other hand, funds for a job-generation programme like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), which proved to be a lifeline for lakhs of youngsters during the pandemic years, have been cut significantly.

With the next parliament polls hardly fifteen months away, the lack of job opportunities will surely be one of the crucial issues topmost on voters’ minds in the days leading to the elections. There have been huge investments in several crucial sectors, but the moot question is whether they have resulted in employment generation on the desired scale. The emerging situation calls for ingenious thinking, so that massive employment schemes can be conceived and implemented to enable every Indian to aspire for a means of self-sustenance.

Expecting Indian industry and the services sector to come to the rescue by creating millions of jobs that can meet youth expectations is a bit far-fetched. Maybe our economic think-tanks and academics can put their heads together and come up with a gem of a programme that can spur economic growth like never before, and also meet expectations of our teeming unemployed.