Page 67 - DECO303_INDIAN_ECONOMY_ENGLISH

Indian Economy

Notes Many of them drift aimlessly into coffee houses, theatres and billiard clubs in a struggle to
escape from the world in which they are sure they have no room and value. This should not
cause suffering to a nation which needs all conceivable physical and psychological support
develop.
“Employment generation is an issue of life and death for our democracy”, says Amit Mitra, secretary
general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a business lobby.
India was Asia’s fastest growing economy in the most current quarter data Progress is at its
highest in nearly 15 years. Glitzy shopping malls are springing up and a culture of consumption
is taking root as foreign companies are attracted by cheap labour.

But growing unemployment is compelling people from country areas to migrate in groups to
nearby cities and towns, creating slums, social unrest and electricity and water scarcities. “There
is some truth in the fact that jobs have not grown as much as expected as the economy has
grown,” Ashok Lahiri, chief economic adviser to the government, told Reuters, “We have to
expand employment. There is no doubt about that. Millions of labouring, street vending and
farm jobs decrease below the administration’s radar screen and getting evidence on them is an
intimidating task. About 92 per cent of Indian jobs are thought to be not formal. Even for the rest
eight per cent, the numbers are firm to come by. The government issues an employment report
every five years and economists can collect tendencies from Indian survey data which is printed
every 10 years. The world’s top economies bring out data every month. India estimate
un-employment now to be around 7.8 per cent. Whether it is, the figure looks to be on the
upswing. The Planning Commission says nearly 35 million people are listed with employment
exchanges from 27 million four years ago.
It is important to understand that India is aware of one thing formed on demographic fashions,
is that to keep the unemployment rate from rising more, it must make some 60 million
occupations in five years as more Indians enter the job market. More than 65 per cent of the
inhabitants are under 35. India imagines economic growth of at least eight per cent in the year
ended March 2012. But economists say it’s not sufficient to produce 12 million jobs a year. For
instance, the country’s achievement in information technology and developing areas such as
retail and tourism is expected to adjust some 2.2 million jobs in the next few years, according to
industry estimates. Government consultant Lahiri bristles at the suggestion this is a jobless
recovery. “I don’t think the growth has been jobless is an overstatement” he said.
However, economists say the trend threatens long-term prospects. “If we fail to make more jobs
it will lead to a lot of social pressure which in turn will hurt the economy,” said Saumitra
Chaudhuri, economic adviser at Information and Credit Rating Services (ICRA). “Large
unemployment for a country like India is not something desirable,” he said.
Some economists say the jobs problem shoots from an economic liberalisation programme
launched more than a decade ago. The country’s huge public sector has shed thousands of jobs
subsequently it walked on the road to privatisation in the early 1990s.The Planning Commission,
in a report on employment printed last year, qualified rising unemployment to a policy of
detaching excess labour in both the private and public sector. It said that many companies had
walked up investing in plants and machinery more than in labour-intensive industries.
Economists add that a $53 billion fiscal deficit stops the government from making employment
by spending more on social areas such as health and education. “We should be observing for a
fiscal-led economic expansion based on the basic wants of the people which will have a much
higher multiplier effect,” says Jayati Ghose, professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In the light of this the task of attaching the jobless must be put on a war footing. Huge urban
employment will be unusable as the cities which have got along well enough deprived of the
recruits, can surely continue to do so. Moreover, massive metropolitan recruitment will be
inflationary and therefore impossible. The jobless population should be prepared for rural

62 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY