Unemployment
The problem is double-edged – on one end, they are increasingly being divorced from their traditional livelihoods through state-sanctioned dispossession, and on the other hand, a worsening labour market with far and few decent employment opportunities renders them unemployed. Reports have called the youth a drag on the Indian economy because of the rise of working-age youth with no jobs in sight. This, even as the government and the civil society either lament that it is the mindsets of young people who do not want to be entrepreneurs and rely instead on government jobs or that the young lack skills to be employable
https://thewire.in/labour/skill-india-unemployment-iti-apprenticeship-jobs
Scholar Santosh Mehrotra while analysing India’s employment crisis, notes that since 2012, there has been an increased share of informal jobs with less than one year’s contract, even in the government and public sector which has led to an increase in the disheartened labour force and educated but unemployed youth. Aspirations in young people for jobs in the public sector have remained, notwithstanding the contraction of public sector employment since the 1990’s opening up of the economy. This marks a sea divide between lived experience of young people and the narratives peddled by the government leading to large-scale resentment and anger in young people.
A resource-rich state like Assam, in Odisha people lose land for state interests and with it, their livelihoods. The poor are displaced from their lands, and the poor are called on in a declining employment scenario in the country to protect corporate interests to join the police and the army. It is, curiously, also resource conservation efforts that displace people from their livelihoods. In Chilika Lake in Odisha, the fisherfolk who rely on fishing for a living lament on how the no-fishing boundary implemented by the state leaves them high and dry with declining community access to the lake. This, apart from the expansion of commercial aquaculture, puts traditional fisher folk in peril. They imagine they will have to move to daily wage labour, letting go of their age-old livelihood practice. Some of them already work in a nearby factory for a paltry wage. They look towards the ITIs for the skills their children would require to get a job in the industries.
by Priyanka Krishna and Bhawna Parmar
07/03/2024
Congress Leader P. Chidambaram Hits Out At Finance Minister Over Rising Unemployment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF9frAtkegA Feb 1, 2024 #Budget2024 During her presentation of the interim Union Budget in Parliament today, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared that there would be no alterations in tax rates for both direct and indirect taxes, including import duties. Simultaneously, the projected fiscal deficit for the fiscal year 2024-25 stands at 5.1 percent of GDP, a decrease from the current financial year's 5.8 percent. With the Lok Sabha elections looming, Sitharaman commenced her Budget speech by emphasizing the economic accomplishments of the Modi government over the past decade.
The latest report titled State of Working India (SWI) 2023 by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment points to wage stagnation in post-Covid India. It shows that its consequences are deeply worrying.
Labour Minister’s employment numbers do not tell the whole story https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/labour-ministers-employment-numbers-do-not-tell-the-whole-story-9761615/
look at the employment rate or WPR the percentage of people employed as a proportion of the total population. WPR.. was 62.2 per cent in 2004-05, the first full year under UPA rule. Since then, despite unprecedented rates of GDP growth, it fell to 55.9 per cent in 2009-10 and 54.7 per cent in 2011-12. The WPR continued to fall well into the first four years of the decade under the NDA to hit a low of 46.8 per cent in 2017-18. It is from this low level that the WPR started its steady upward climb and by the end of 2023-24 (July to June year), rose to 58.2 per cent. In other words, the dip and recovery in employment rate does not follow the neat political divide.
Most notably, perhaps, the recent improvement in India’s labour statistics hides the poor quality of the new jobs being created in the economy. ..the fact that most of the new jobs are in the low-paying “self-employment” category — especially as “unpaid helpers in household enterprises” — actually suggests deepening economic distress.
What is the Real Story of Unemployment in India? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q-y_AG6JhM The Wire
Sep 11, 2024
There are wide variations in the number and quality of employment generation in India, which largely stems from the data one uses to estimate these figures. Two prominent researchers in this field, Dr Surjit Bhalla and Dr Santosh Mehrotra, with differing opinions, will present their case .