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Unit 5: Unemployment in India

in urban regions in rural India. Unemployment or under-employment levels for women are Notes
more than those for men. Additionally, the educated persons tend to be more jobless or
underemployed than their illiterate counterparts.
According to current estimates, 12 per cent of educated individuals are unemployed while
overall unemployment percentage is 3.77 per cent. It has also been observed that the
unemployment charges increase with every following higher level of education.
As per the Planning Commission and National Sample Survey, the number of unemployed is
highest in the age group of 19 to 26 years. The total number of unemployed persons in India
nowadays is nearly 380 lakh.
In this unit, you will learn about the unemployment in India, types and causes of unemployment.
You will also study about the natural rate of unemployment, Structural unemployment and
labour mobility and labour market or government failure. The unit will also cover some of the
measures taken by the State. At the end of the unit, you will also study about the strategies
government took to reduce unemployment in India.

5.1 Unemployment in India

Now let us discuss the unemployment in India. “Jobs in India are decreasing at a shocking rate.
Privatisation and globalisation have increased the problem. In place of generating employment,
they have reduced millions of hands idle. American policies are effective there but not in India
where the ill-fated ones are left to fend for themselves leading to blocking, dissatisfaction, anger
and violence”.
Unemployment is the mother of numerous problems. It is poisonous that contaminates the
society, compromises the democratic fabric of the country. We can’t suppose decency, morality
and truth from a person who is not able to accomplish two square meals a day for his family. A
jobless person has no sense of self-respect as he has no sense of safety.

“Rightly”, said by Franklin, “A ploughman on his feet is better than a gentleman on his knees.”
Approximations of the total number of Indians jobless or underemployed differ between 70 and
100 million. This number can be a reason of concern for any nation, but to an emerging country
like ours, it is the cause of great distress. A developing country must organize its manpower
assets to the supreme possible degree and a developing country through such a large section of
its population without a job or under-employed is an inconsistency in terms.
You may already be aware that in India, the threat of unhappiness and hunger of fallen hopes
and unproductive dreams of unpleasant pain and dark misery disturbs the unemployed. It is
true that the future of a country relies on the ability and the mental alertness of its young men
and women. If India permits her young men to be engrossed by uncertainty and frustration, she
will have to pay for transformation and fast progress with several years of stagnation.

The universities with their methods of mass education and system of examination offer little
information. The completion of the course, attained after many years of ill-spent determination
and expenditure of large amount of hard received money of the parents, very frequently turn
out to be acerbic, as the degrees soon shows that they are valueless, and succeed neither in
growing the students’ mental attentiveness and rational capabilities nor in raising their chances
of employment.
The student inept to secure employment gives one theoretical degree to another, one vacuum to
another and as he goes on, the employment that he wants is found increasingly subtle. Towards
the end of the process, the student understand that he is not first-class qualified student who can
go out of the campus into coming up profit-making units; that he is not doing a favour by
linking them but that they are doing him a favour by accepting him.

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