Employment Crisis: Is The Government Doing Better?

Everybody dreams of getting a job after passing all the hurdles at schools and colleges. We have around millions of youth seeking the best jobs for them be it educated or uneducated. While the youth of the urban areas being educated, dreams about high paid employment opportunities, the majority of the youth of the rural areas being educated or not, are just looking for any kind of jobs. Today, we decided to give some food for thought to make people aware about the status of the various job opportunities around. Just have a look.

• Is There Enough Employment Opportunities For All Of Us:

Most of the time I hear just about economy and how to further push this economy ahead. We talk about GDP growth each and every year. The thing that we need to understand is that even this topic is as much important as any other topics, be it economy related or related to GDP. We see that the economy of India is picking up pace. But can we say the same about the employment opportunities? Well, I guess the answer should be a ‘NO’. This employment generation is lagging far behind, especially in India.

If we talk about the job opportunities, we can say that a job opportunity is the combination of self employed people as well as those people that work in any office for someone else. Between the year 2005 and 2010, there were around 27.7 million additional jobs available. But, at the same time, the number of the self employed jobs decreased by a number of 25.5 million approximately. Hence, to sum up, I would like to say that this growth in the number of jobless people is very dangerous.

• What Needs To Be Done?

Okay, so the first thing that comes in my mind for this question is that we need to have right policy intervention. This very well showcases that India does not have right proportion between the workforce and the industry, Not many self employment opportunities etc. We need to understand that an increasing, or even high economic growth is not at all adequate for creating job opportunities as well. We have to have necessary and right policies that will complement for creating more job opportunities. This is entirely dependent on the role of the government.

• The Various Government Schemes Introduced To Increase Several Job Opportunities:

The government is trying its level best to increase these opportunities and make them available for the youths. Below are the various government schemes:

• Swarnjayanthi Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY): This move came into effect in the year 1999, this program deals with self employment of the poor rural youths.
• Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Program (PMEGP): The Prime Minister launched this scheme in the year 2008. This scheme deals with the generation of continuous and sustainable job opportunities, both in rural as well as urban areas.
• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA): This scheme also guarantees employment in financial year for 100 days to a rural house, whose adults have no problem in doing unskilled manual work.
• Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY): Launched in the year 1997, this flagship program deals with providing employment to urban unemployed as well as under employed youths.
• The Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana: This has a corpus of around Rs. 20,000 crore. MUDRA is all set up by Mr. Narendra Modi to provide loan amount equal to Rs. 10 lakhs to small businesses. This scheme is launched with an objective to ‘fund the unfunded’.
• National Career Service: Narendra Modi launched this project in the year 2015. It aims in establishing an efficient career related platform. This will help the government to focus on generation of more employment opportunities.

• Some Other Important Government’s Initiatives:

• Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY): PMGSY came into effect in the year 2000. Main aim was to provide roads to all villages. It has various deadlines regarding the completion of constructions. All these construction generates further employment opportunities for local youth and skilled labour.
• Samagra Awas Yojana (SAY): The year 1999-2000 marked the beginning of this scheme. It dealt in providing provisions of shelter, sanitation as well as drinking water. In the process of creating shelter, several job opportunities are created.
• Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY): The Prime Minister launched this scheme in the year 2001. It has an aim to provide additional wage job opportunities in the rural areas.
• Rural Housing Schemes: Various rural housing schemes were launched, such as the Indira Awaas Yojana. It deals in providing dwelling houses, and that too free of cost to the poor families residing in the rural areas. The construction work requires hiring of laborers, which will further create job opportunities.
  

  What About The Year 2017?

  In the year 2015-16, the GDP growth rate has pegged at above 6.5%. This rate was after below 5% growth rate in the previous years. We expect the job market in 2017 to be strong in terms of hiring mode. Since also, there are large number of MNCs that we expect, will connect with India and that will create further increased number of jobs available. Although as per the survey performed by the labour bureau  in 2011-12 the unemployment rate stood at 3.8 %, it increased to 4.7 % in 2012-13, and a further to 4.9 % in 2013-14. Next survey would be a report card for the current governments initiative.