CAN INDIA BRING OUR UNEMPLOYMENT RATE TO ZERO

According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey the unemployment rate in India has a declining trend: 2020-21= 4.2%, 2021-22 = 4.1%, 2022-23 = 3.2%. The percentage of unemployment shown above may appear to be not very high in comparison with other countries. While looking at our large population these cannot be small in numbers. Over and above these when we add the figures of under employed, those unaccounted found in large numbers in the agricultural sector, the youth passing out every year etc into consideration the actual figures may may be much higher. We may also keep in mind that there are countries like South Africa with 29.8%, Djibouti with 27.9%, West Bank/Gaza with 25.7% etc have high rates of unemployment.

While assessing the employment rate,  the median age too holds significance. Countries with lowest median age are, Niger 15.3, Uganda 15.7 and Mali 16.2. When we take the work force, India is on the best layer of the median age 28.4 (29.8). The median age of Japan is 43.9, Russia 41 9, China 40.2 and US 38.9 (56th position). As far as the man power deployment is concerned, median age of 28.4 is really advantageous for our country.

If our country is to look for zero rate of unemployment, the Central and State Governments should strictly pay good attention on this. It is not large investment that matters but continuous attention that makes more important. For instance the coming years will have diminishing demands for petroleum. To the best of my opinion we have petroleum in our country as much as to suspend the current imports. By retaining it here tomorrow we may not find as much use as we have today. We may also encourage the automobile industry to manufacture more Electric Vehicles with higher mileage and should be made available at a much lower price. In such case our petroleum requirement will come down considerably and also we can export large number of vehicles to other countries. Most important is all the action will create large employment opportunities. Alongwith these we can also look for more electricity generation by different means.

We can also think about manufacturing more detence equipments indigenously to create more employment and reduce import expenses. Another sector that have more employment opportunities available is agriculture. The existing output per hectare of various agricultural products can be increased by continuous research. Land which are not used for cultivation for want of water can be leased to adequate number of youth for long period with permission to bring water from nearest available source. This will also help to deploy large number of unemployed people.

We have good number of students passing out from many institutions after successfully completing various courses like engineering and other technical courses, commerce, different medical courses etc. Many of them cannot secure employment. Though good number of them want to do something of their own, most of them cannot raise sufficient funds for investment. In order to avail bank loan, banks always ask for suitable collateral security for the loan amount and most of these people cannot bring in such collateral security. This can be easily sorted out by the Central Government. For instance we can have about one lakh industries with a maximum of five cores investment in each from bank loan with no collateral security and not by any financial assistance by the government. Each industry can provide an average employment for about thirty people, both direct and indirect. This can be done in different states and thereby employment can be arranged for few millions of people with zero expenditure by the government. (How this can be executed shall be explained to the concerned as and when required.)

(Indebted to Director General of Employment  (India), Investopedia, Statatista etc for many of tha data)

K V George