Growing reliance on MGNREGA in rural areas, elevated youth unemployment in urban areas, are worrying signals

In 2018-19, 5.27 crore households had availed of work under MGNREGA. In 2019-20, a year before the pandemic, this had risen to 5.48 crore. During the pandemic year of 2020, it rose further to a staggering 7.55 crore. While in the following year (2021-22), the number of households came down to 7.26 crore, it was still significantly higher than even the pre-pandemic trend. These numbers indicate that reliance on the employment guarantee scheme has only been growing. This points to a few possibilities. First, that not enough productive jobs are being created in rural areas — 21 states and Union territories observed an increase in households availing work under the scheme. That the jobs that are being created aren’t remunerative enough, requiring households to supplement their incomes by working under the scheme. After all, inflation pinches the poor more. Or, that, post the pandemic, households are trying to rebuild their emergency buffers. In urban areas, the latest periodic labour force survey shows that even as the unemployment rate among the youth (those aged 15-29) has dipped in recent quarters, it remained uncomfortably high at 20.2 per cent during January-March 2022.

Protests against the Indian railways recruitment process, against the government’s Agnipath scheme for recruitment for the armed forces, pressures from various castes to expand the scope of reservation, attempts by state governments to reserve jobs for locals – all are symptomatic of growing concerns over inadequate employment generation in the country. These have only deepened since the pandemic. They reflect the failure, under the watch of successive governments, to absorb the millions of low and semi-skilled workers, who are entering the labour force each year, and those who are stuck in the low productivity agricultural sector.