An impending storm
Jobless growth can lead to social unrest like the Jat and Patel agitations . India must invest in education and skills
With the assembly elections over, one of the big issues which will hog public attention in the coming days is the Jat agitation. Before leaving Delhi after their protests on March 1, the Jats promised to come back on March 20 and convert the city into “Jat land”. Whether they will manage to do that or not only time will tell but the reasons for their disgruntlement — lack of jobs — will stay. The lack of adequate job opportunities was also the key reason behind the recent agitations of the Marathas and the Patels. This link between such social unrest and high unemployment rates was brought up by former plan panel member Arun Maira during a recent meeting. He said that India needs to create jobs or else there will be social unrest. According to the former member of the Planning Commission, India produces the least number of jobs per unit of growth.
In fact, this is not the case only in India. According to the International Labour Organisation, the global unemployment rate is expected to rise modestly from 5.7 to 5.8% in 2017 representing an increase of 3.4 million in the number of jobless people. The number of unemployed persons globally in 2017 is forecast to stand at just over 201 million – with an additional rise of 2.7 million expected in 2018 – as the pace of labour force growth outstrips job creation, according to the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2017.
The lack of jobs is not just one challenge for India: Increasing automation will also take away many existing jobs. The policy prescription (job creation) is straightforward but, as India is increasingly finding out, not easy, especially because the level of literacy and skilling is poor. Every year, 10-12 million young people join the labour force, and five million people leave agriculture to join the non-agriculture sectors. Thus, there exists a total demand of 17- 20 million new jobs per annum. In such a scenario, social security in the form of unemployment benefits could be one way of ensuring social stability, while continuing to invest heavily in education and skilling.