The big Budget announcement of five major employment-related schemes sounds impressive. The schemes are to have an ambitious ₹2 lakh crore outlay spread over five years to facilitate jobs and skilling and other opportunities for 4.1 crore youth. The Economic Survey has made a strong case for employment, goading the private sector to create jobs, the reasons being lower taxes since 2019 and higher profits post the COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister’s package for employment must be seen along with other initiatives for human well-being.
Any evidence-based road map for sustainable mass employment with dignity must begin by recognising the race to the bottom on wages, when unlimited unskilled workers are available. Let us not forget that the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20 had found that a wage earner is in the top 10% if he/she earns ₹25,000 a month. Short-duration skill programmes have had low long-term placements. This is often on account of wage being low for a life of dignity in urban areas. Many went back to their villages to do something else.
Labour: Jobs and States
Evidence also points to the continuum of education and skills. Monthly per capita consumption is the highest in States such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim. These States have better human development indicators as well. Odisha, in spite of pushing short duration skilling, has a low per capita consumption in the absence of robust higher secondary/higher/vocational opportunities in institutions.
Mass employment with dignity requires productivity increases. While it is fine for the Economic Survey to urge the private sector to create jobs, it must be understood that the state also has a role in determining the floor rate of wages and in assuring high quality public goods. There is enough evidence that public employment per unit of population in India is much lower than what it is in most of the developed world. What should the key policy initiatives in creating sustainable mass employment with dignity be?
Skilling needs
First, begin from below through decentralised community action, to identify skilling needs. Ownership by a community of State programmes only comes through direct community action. The gram sabha or basti samitis in urban areas can play a critical role in taking government programmes to the people. The steps can be as follows: Create a register of all those wanting employment/self-employment. Create a plan for every youth in partnership with professionals at the cluster level. Well-educated professionals are needed on fixed-term appointment at the local government level, to ensure evidence-based outcomes. Make it the basis for finding skill providers and employers. Let apprenticeships too base themselves on such a community connect. The result will be transformational. Let us begin from below.
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Second, converge initiatives for education, health, skills, nutrition, livelihoods, and employment (at the local government level) with women’s collectives. This will ensure community accountability, with untied funds, functions and functionaries for effective quality outcomes. Employment does not improve in isolation. All human development indicators achieve better when they devolve and converge. Untied funds are transformational as communities make effective choices. India’s failures in public goods (education, health, nutrition, environment, and sanitation) can improve through such an approach. We need to put in more money in these sectors, through decentralised community action.
Education and employability
Third, introduce need-based vocational courses/certificate programmes alongside undergraduate programmes (B.A., B.Sc., B. Com.) in every college. This has been done in the past. It needs to be made compulsory in every college. Give them the resources to experiment. For example, there are some colleges in Mumbai that provide certificate courses (with graduation) such as tourist guide, counsellor, and so on. This will greatly improve employability on scale. Make graduation programmes employable.
Fourth, standardise nursing and allied health-care professional courses in all States according to international benchmarks. Nurses, geriatric care-givers, and health paramedics are required on scale in and outside India. The biggest problem is the uneven quality of institutions and the absence of a standardised course curriculum and duration. We need to standardise these skill sets to international standards.
Fifth, create community cadres of care-givers to run crèches universally so that women can work without fear. We have a four- to six-hour anganwadi service but the number of infants is more than what a crèche care-giver can manage. We need to create a community cadre of crèche care-givers, who can be paid by the local governments/women’s collective after intensive training. The Community Resource Persons of the Rural Livelihood Mission is a good model to follow. Community cadres can have multiple livelihoods in agriculture, animal rearing, non-farm opportunities, and retail shops.
Sixth, invest in Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), polytechnics as hubs in skill development for feeder schools. The absence of quality and up-to-date infrastructure in many ITIs, polytechnics, and Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) is a very critical gap in an age of upskilling and re-skilling. Institutions have to be autonomous and community managed. These technical institutions can also work as a hub for feeder schools. Schools must develop an equivalence framework for academic and vocational inputs in terms of credits and hours. The focus should be on States/districts with the least institutional structure for vocational education. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have large capacity that has helped manufacturing in those States. Human capital matters.
Seventh, introduce enterprise and start-up skills through professionals in high schools. Schools need to introduce technology and enterprise as a subject at the upper primary/high school-level onwards. It is important that experimentation and innovation with an understanding of business processes are a part of the regular school curriculum. Visits by professionals to schools can impart finishing skills to students; employment/enterprise follows.
Eighth, have a co-sharing model of apprenticeships with industry on scale. This is critical as far as manufacturing sector opportunities or even the services sector is concerned. Skilling costs must be shared with potential employers as standalone government-funded skilling is not always the best way forward. Unless industry has a stake in the apprenticeship, it does not work.
Capital loans and enterprises
Ninth, streamline working capital loans for women-led enterprises/first-generation enterprises to enable them to go to scale. The lessons from the lakhpati didis of the Rural Livelihoods Mission bring out the challenges in getting working capital loans. While efforts to create comprehensive credit histories of every woman borrower is underway, technology can be a great enabler in going to scale. The Reserve Bank Innovation Hub and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission are trying to come up with innovations that give confidence to banks to lend on a higher scale. The success of the Start Up Village Enterprise Programme (SVEP) under the NRLM brings out the importance of hand holding, Community Enterprise Fund, and end-to-end solutions for first generation entrepreneurs.
Tenth, start a universal skill accreditation programme for skill providing institutions, and let the state and industry jointly sponsor candidates for courses. Skill providers can be accredited after a rigorous assessment process. Candidates can be co-sponsored by the state and employers.
Eleventh, use 70% funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2,500 water-scarce blocks and blocks with high deprivation, with a thrust on the poorest 20 families. Individual beneficiary schemes under MGNREGA allow for livelihood security through income-generating initiatives such as animal sheds, irrigation wells, work sheds, and so on. Focus on skills for higher productivity of MGNREGA wage earners. Better wage rates will facilitate lives of dignity on scale, in very poor regions.
Twelfth, apprenticeships on scale can facilitate the absorption of youth in a workplace. The scale must go up. The focus must be on skill acquisition or else it can get routinised with a stipend being provided, merely as an incentive. The government’s condition for employer subsidies in any form must always be for wages of dignity on successful completion of apprenticeship. Let us create a higher order economy, with higher productivity and a higher quality of lives for workmen.
Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant. The views expressed are personal
