Budget 2023: Why India Needs A Jobs Policy https://www.fortuneindia.com/long-reads/budget-2023-why-india-needs-a-jobs-policy/111005
The country's job crisis is structural and systemic; reliance on high growth and manufacturing has simply not worked.
By Prasanna Mohanty, Jan 4, 2023
in 2019-20, the country witnessed structural shifts in jobs. PLFS reports revealed agriculture's share of jobs reversed that year, going up from 42.5% in 2018-19 to 45.6% in 2019-20 and 46.5% in 2020-21. Manufacturing's share, on the other hand, went down from 12.1% to 11.2% and 10.9%, in corresponding years. Jobs also moved away from formal to informal and high productive, high income to low productive, low income and vulnerable ones.
India surely needs big businesses and exporting units because they provide better quality (high-income) jobs. But it needs more labour-intensive ones for millions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers who dominate the workforce. It needs more jobs in rural areas in particular because urban workers have fled there and refuse to return — causing labour shortage of 68% in Tier-1 cities and 32% in other cities in 2022, according to an industry estimate, swelling the ranks of MGNREGS workers.
The government needs to revive small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but there's no data on the number that shut shop permanently due to demonetisation, GST and Covid-19. A survey by private enterprise Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship recently said 14% MSMEs permanently exited their businesses during the pandemic.
35.3%, or 11,175 posts, of faculty members are vacant in central universities, IITs and IIMs. There were 11.6%, or 0.13 million, vacancies in CAPFs (BSF, CISF, CRPF, ITBP, NDRF etc.) as on January 1, 2021. Another 0.14 million vacancies existed in the Army, Navy and Air Force, as on July 22, 2022; the four-year Agnipath scheme will only fill 46,000 of this, leaving a net vacancy of 90,000 by the end of 2022.
The Railways abolished 72,000 Group C and D posts in six years during FY16-FY21. Hiring temporary and casual workers has been on the rise. A study by the Indian Staffing Federation (ISF) revealed in 2014 that (i) 43% government jobs (Central, state, PSUs and local bodies) were temporary (ii) 2/3rd of incremental formal workforce was temporary, with 80% in casual jobs (iii) high incidence of professionals and high-skilled workers, including architects, engineers and teachers, professors were on short-term contracts and (iv) 56% of those working in government schemes like ICDS, NRHM, NRLM (Anganwadi and ASHA workers) were "honorary" workers, getting "honorarium", instead of wages/salaries. ASHA and Anganwadi workers (around 2.5 million) have long agitated for proper remuneration.