21 August 2024 : The Hindu Editorial Analysis

1. A ground plan for sustainable mass employment

(Source – The Hindu, International Edition – Page No. – 8)

Topic: GS3 – Indian Economy – Issues relating to development and employment.

Context

This article addresses India’s employment challenges, focusing on recent government initiatives aimed at job creation, skilling, and improving human development indicators. It emphasises the need for community-driven skilling, vocational education reforms, and convergence of development programs to create sustainable mass employment with dignity amidst wage stagnation and labour market issues.

Employment Schemes and Economic Survey Insights

• The government has announced five major employment-related schemes with an outlay of ₹2 lakh crore over five years, aiming to provide jobs, skills, and opportunities for 4.1 crore youth.
• The Economic Survey emphasised employment creation by the private sector, driven by lower taxes since 2019 and higher profits post-pandemic.
• Sustainable mass employment requires addressing the low wages problem when unskilled workers are abundant.
• The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20 revealed that earning ₹25,000/month puts a wage earner in the top 10%.
• Short-duration skill programs have resulted in low long-term placements due to inadequate wages, forcing many to return to villages for alternative work.

Education and Human Development Indicators

• States with better education and vocational opportunities like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Himachal Pradesh show higher monthly per capita consumption and better human development indicators.
• In contrast, Odisha, despite short-duration skilling, has low per capita consumption due to the absence of robust higher education/vocational institutions.

Skilling Needs and Community Participation

• Community-based skilling needs identification should start from below through decentralised action like gram sabhas or urban basti samitis.
• A register of job-seekers can help create plans for each youth, connecting them with skill providers and employers.
• Apprenticeships should be tied to community connections for transformational outcomes.

Converging Initiatives for Employment

• Converge initiatives such as education, health, skills, and employment at the local government level with women’s collectives to ensure community accountability.
• Untied funds and decentralised action are needed to address India’s failures in public goods (education, health, and sanitation).

Vocational Education in Colleges

• Introduce vocational courses alongside undergraduate programs in every college, improving employability by offering courses such as tourist guide or counsellor certification.
• Colleges in Mumbai already offer such certificate programs, and this approach should be made compulsory nationwide.

Standardising Healthcare Professional Courses

• Standardise nursing and allied healthcare courses across States to international benchmarks.
• There’s a growing demand for healthcare professionals (nurses, geriatric caregivers) in and outside India, but institutional quality is uneven.

Universal Childcare and Women’s Employment

• Create community cadres of caregivers to run universal crèches so women can work without fear.
• The current Anganwadi service is insufficient for the number of infants needing care.
• The Community Resource Persons of the Rural Livelihood Mission can serve as a model for this initiative.

Enhancing ITI and Polytechnic Education

• Invest in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), polytechnics, and Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) to enhance skill development.
• These institutions must have up-to-date infrastructure and function as hubs for feeder schools.
• States like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have leveraged their vocational education infrastructure to boost manufacturing.

Entrepreneurship and School-Level Initiatives

• Introduce enterprise and start-up skills in high schools through professionals, integrating technology and business processes into the curriculum.
• Schools should foster experimentation and innovation, while professionals can impart finishing skills to students.

Co-sharing Model for Apprenticeships

• Adopt a co-sharing apprenticeship model between government and industry to ensure stakeholder participation.
• Government-funded skilling programs alone are insufficient without industry engagement.

Supporting Women-led Enterprises

• Streamline working capital loans for women-led enterprises and first-generation entrepreneurs to enable scalability.
• Technology and innovations from the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) can aid banks in scaling lending.
• The Start-Up Village Enterprise Program (SVEP) under the NRLM highlights the importance of hand-holding and end-to-end solutions for entrepreneurs.

Skill Accreditation and MGNREGA

• Establish a universal skill accreditation program for skill providers, with joint sponsorship from the state and industry.
• Use 70% of MGNREGA funds in 2,500 water-scarce blocks, focusing on the poorest 20 families to support livelihood security through income-generating initiatives like animal sheds and irrigation wells.

Expanding Apprenticeships

• Expand apprenticeship opportunities to facilitate the absorption of youth into workplaces.
• Ensure that successful apprenticeships result in wages of dignity, helping create a higher-order economy with improved productivity and quality of life for workers.

Conclusion

• To achieve sustainable mass employment with dignity, India must focus on community-driven skilling, vocational education integration, and converging developmental initiatives.
• A decentralised approach, involving local communities and industries, alongside improved public goods and wage standards, is essential for enhancing employability, productivity, and quality of life for workers.

PYQ: Besides the welfare schemes, India needs dem management of inflation and unemployment to serve the poor and the underprivileged sections of the society. Discuss.(250 Words /15 marks) (UPSC CSE (M) GS-2 2022)

Practice Question:  Discuss the role of community-driven skilling and vocational education reforms in achieving sustainable mass employment with dignity in India. (250 Words /15 marks)

2. Creating employment in the long run

Topic: GS3 – Indian Economy – Issues relating to development and employment.

(Source – The Hindu, International Edition – Page No. – 9)

Context

The article critiques the Indian government’s employment schemes and the flaws in its annual Budget announcements. It highlights the disconnect between grand promises and actual implementation. The article emphasises ineffective supply-side measures for tackling unemployment, the lack of demand in the economy, and the need for long-term public sector investment.

Flaws in the Budget Process

• A recurring issue with the annual Budget process is that the Finance Minister often makes grand announcements that dominate headlines but lack follow-up or accountability.
• The focus each year shifts to new announcements, neglecting the assessment of previous schemes and their actual implementation.

Disinvestment Targets and Employment Promises

• For several years, the Finance Minister announced high disinvestment targets, which were supposed to lower the fiscal deficit.
• However, except for some stake purchases by government entities, none of these efforts succeeded.
• This year, the focus shifted to employment-related announcements. While acknowledging the unemployment crisis is a welcome change, the proposed schemes are unlikely to be fulfilled due to poor design and implementation delays.

Employment Scheme Design Flaws

• The government introduced a five-scheme package aimed at tackling unemployment, incentivizing 1 crore internships over five years.
• The internship programme is limited to the top 500 companies, which excludes micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that could benefit from lower-cost interns.
• Expecting these companies to take on 4,000 interns each year is unrealistic, especially with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) reducing job availability.
• The Finance Minister later clarified that the scheme was not mandatory, but merely a nudge.

Comparisons with Congress’s Apprenticeship Proposal

• The Congress’s Right to Apprenticeship proposal was open to all companies and was intended to be based on an Apprenticeship Act, enabling on-the-job training for youth.
• The Congress proposal aimed to improve youth employability by addressing education and skilling deficiencies, while the current government’s internship programme lacks these nuances.

Flaws in Government’s Employment Strategy

• The government is relying on supply-side measures to solve unemployment, which are not effective without a corresponding rise in demand.
• The Atmanirbhar Bharat package had a similar flaw, and the current employment measures risk failing in the same manner.
• Without an increase in production capacity, companies are unlikely to risk lowering profit margins by adding more employees, even with the promise of financial incentives from the government.

Job Crisis and Government Data

• Just before the Budget, a report from Citigroup Inc highlighted the persistent job crisis, which prompted the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to release data claiming that 109 million jobs had been created between 2019-20 and 2023-24.
• Experts have questioned the validity of this data, as it relies on extrapolation and lacks alignment with other employment surveys.
• The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) shows only a 4% increase in the labour force participation rate since 2019-20, contradicting claims of mass job creation.

Agriculture and Self-Employment

• Much of the job creation is attributed to people moving into agriculture and self-employment, with 46% of the workforce now engaged in agriculture.
• The lack of significant growth in agricultural income suggests that people are taking up farm work due to a lack of better opportunities elsewhere.
• MGNREGA data further highlights rural distress, with 24.8 lakh new job card holders and 5.8 crore people demanding work already in 2024-25.

Decline in Manufacturing Jobs

• Despite the Make in India initiative, the share of manufacturing in the workforce has declined, from 12.6% in 2011-12 to 11.4% in 2022-23.
• Key job-creating industries like textiles, electronics, leather, and paper products have seen negative growth in industrial production, exacerbating the job crisis.

Students Struggling for Government Jobs

• A tragic incident in Delhi, where three students drowned while preparing for government exams, highlights the dire conditions faced by those competing for government jobs.
• With lakhs of candidates striving for limited government posts, many view government jobs as the only path to upward social mobility.

Government Job Vacancies

• In the first eight years of the BJP government, 22 crore government job applications were received, but only 7.2 lakh candidates were hired.
• There are 30 lakh vacancies in sanctioned posts at various levels in the Central government, and the government should prioritise filling these vacancies through timely recruitment and addressing issues like paper leaks.

Need for Long-Term Investment

• Instead of relying on nudges and short-term schemes, the government should focus on a long-term investment plan in essential public services, including green jobs.
• This would not only improve the quality of life but also help create a more productive workforce and sustainable employment opportunities.

Conclusion

• The government’s employment-related schemes suffer from poor design and a lack of realism.
• To effectively address the jobs crisis, it needs to focus on long-term investments in public services, green jobs, and timely recruitment in the public sector.
• Supply-side measures alone will not solve the lack of demand in the economy.

PYQ: Most of the unemployment in India is structural in nature. Examine the methodology adopted to compute unemployment in the country and suggest improvements. (250 words/15m) (UPSC CSE (M) GS-3 2023)

Practice Question:  Critically analyse the effectiveness of employment schemes announced in the Indian Union Budget in addressing the country’s unemployment crisis. What alternative measures can be adopted to create sustainable and inclusive job opportunities? (250 Words /15 marks)