For the first time, the government of India is planning to include employment policy in the next year's budget. The policy will focus on the creation of quality jobs across all the business sectors.
While the economy is growing at a fast pace, the job creation is on the opposite trajectory. Modi government wants to make an attempt to improve the job creation using the employment policy. The government wants to address the issues of providing quality jobs to the unemployed youth in the country.
The multi-layered employment policy will leverage economic, social and labor policy interventions. The government is likely to offer attractive incentives for employers to create more jobs. The policy will help in attracting new enterprises. The government is betting big on the small and medium-sized businesses to generate more employment in coming few years.
The data suggests that over 10 million graduate youth is produced in the country each year. Over 30% of youth in the country is currently unemployed, there is a vast number of people looking to get blue-collar jobs. Unemployment is a big problem in India that hasn't been addressed by any of the government policies before.
A few months back, Niti Aayog said that the real problem in the country is not unemployment but a 'severe under-employment.' The government agency wants the central government to work on the policy that will create highly productive and high-wage jobs. Aayog has published a three-year action agenda for 2017-18 and 2019-20.
The agenda states, "Contrary to some assertions that India's growth has been 'jobless', the Employment Unemployment Surveys (EUS) of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has consistently reported low and stable rates of unemployment over more than three decades. Indeed, unemployment is the lesser of India's problems. The more serious problem, instead, is severe underemployment."
The Indian economy lacks in terms of quality of jobs. The unemployed youth in the country is three times than that of China. With the unemployment rate increasing by as much as 5% each year, the situation is quite severe for the economic development. The Modi-led BJP government is hoping to get some positive feedback for including employment policy ahead of General Elections 2019.
- Rajat Kabade