...only if we change our beehive thinking and focus on making specific, systemic changes

Joblessness is like an albatross around our necks, noticeable and mentionable, but a drag that nobody has an idea of how to deal with. Even in poll season, none of the political parties has articulated specifics of a rehabilitation plan despite knowing that a manifesto of redemption would work with the masses. Perhaps, the political class, guilty of having created the mess in the first place, would not like to acknowledge their shortness of vision or the lack of it. Perhaps, they do not want to commit, knowing the anger non-fulfilment stokes. Or perhaps, by letting the problem fester they have a better chance of fomenting political unrest. But cold statistics keep knocking at our door and the latest to hit us comes from Maharashtra, where 7,000 people, mostly college graduates, applied for 13 waiter jobs at the secretariat canteen, a job that requires candidates to be educated up to Class IV. And if that isn’t a measure of desperation, consider that in a recruitment drive by Indian Railways, nearly 19 million people from across the country applied for 63,000 vacant posts! With no credible figures on unemployment being put out by the NDA government, which had promised to create two crore jobs per year ever since it took over the reins, we have the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy figures quantifying joblessness as nearly seven per cent despite GDP growth. Job elasticity is simply not there though the government is now desperately seeking cover in Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) figures of increased subscriptions. However, we must remember that much of that has to do with migration of labour from informal to formal sectors, reorganisation of the labour market and may not have anything to do with net job creation at all. The time for complaints and justification is over and we have to pursue a recuperative vision. Keeping to the flavour of popular parlance, rozgari cannot be milked as a poll plank till we see some kaamdari in right earnest.

India’s unemployment challenge is more serious compared to others because of its large productive youth population, usually considered a demographic dividend but in the absence of jobs could very well become a demographic disaster instead. Yes, there is lack of growth in the industrial sector and in an automated scenario, that cannot be readily relied upon. Given the increased digitisation of operations, new jobs have to be reliant on the services sector while insular global trade policies mean that we must ramp up domestic demand. Medium-scale enterprises can emerge as the sunshine sector in terms of job absorption capacity while education, healthcare and tourism will have to be primed given their dominant service orientation. For all initiatives like Skill India, there must be an industry-aided skill requirement map so that the problem of overqualification, as evidenced by the latest job rush queues in Maharashtra, does not dash hopes. Besides, there must be a provision for career-long skill upgradation given that the economic paradigm can change due to technological breakthroughs and fluidity of the economy. Yes, use of AI may kill some traditional jobs but as seen with the IT revolution, it can also encourage an allied layer of human services and talent. Surely no change can be guaranteed overnight. That’s why an integrated systems thinking is necessary to factor in future imperatives beforehand to ensure flexibility and adaptability. Albert Einstein had once said, “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We need to not only think out of the box but be ready to jump out of it.