Whole nation is busy discussing the 2024-25 budget presented in the Parliament on July 23. The corporate sectors are fielding learned men and women to bat for their own benefits. More and more concessions is to be granted to the friendly corporate houses. Unfortunately, neither the finance minister nor the prime minister are taking up unemployment issue seriously. Issues like the political turmoil in the UP unit of BJP are very good means to conceal the failure of the government to generate employment.
During the campaign for the parliamentary elections in the year 2014, Narendra Modi made many promises to the electorate. One of the prominent promises made loudly by him (and loved by the people) was the creation of two crore (twenty million) jobs every year. In ten years, as per his promise he and his government should have created (directly or indirectly) twenty crore jobs (two hundred million jobs) before he went for the third term as the prime minister.

Unfortunately like many of his promises PM very cleverly and conveniently chose to forget this promise. In fact many of his policy decision led to decline in employment, creating a situation where unemployment shot up highest in the last forty years. One of the important reasons for the decline in employment in the country was sell out of Public Sector Units (PSUs) by the government. No other government in independent India sold so many PSUs at such cheap rates. The overall effect was not only on the productivity but also on employment. Millions of young people remained jobless!

It is not that there was no growth during this period for Modi government. There was growth of some corporate giants who became much more rich and bigger. Unemployment on one hand was leading to more and more poverty on one end while on the other end there was more and more concentration of wealth for a minuscule of the population. Just one percent of the population was now owner of seventy percent (70 percent) of all the wealth of the nation. Nowhere else in the world, the gap between the haves and the have-nots was so wide. India is being taken on the path of ‘Monopoly Capitalism’! Facilitator is “Government of India”. From Ahmedabad to Kolkata every airport now belongs to Adani group. Nobody has the guts to raise a finger against the sudden spurt in the air travel cost.

What came out of the pro-corporate economic policies of PM Narendra Modi and FM Nirmala Sitharaman, was a textbook case of “Jobless Growth”. The economy of India is growing. We may become sooner or later a ‘five trillion’ economy yet our youth would remain jobless!

Last year when enough jobs were not created, and in the existing jobs a policy of ‘hire& fire’ was brought in France the whole youth of the country was on the streets demanding better jobs and better wages. For one complete week life in France had come to stand still. Finally the Government under Macron succumbed to the demands of the youth. Policy of ‘hire & fire’ was replaced with a time guarantee. Only then the situation could be brought to normal. Jobs are so important!

The Times of India, in its July 20, 2024 issue published a very interesting feature about situation of unemployment in the country. The report also says that most of the Indians are now self-employed. Almost 57.3 percent of Indians are self-employed out of which the women have a higher percentage of 65.3! Many of these women work without any payment. Some men, about ten percent work without any cash compensation. These are the people who live hand to mouth. They have very simple and small houses with meagre facilities. When Government stops spending on education and health, these are the people who slide downwards into absolute poverty!

According to this report fewer Indians have regular jobs today. Capitalism doesn’t believe in permanence of jobs. In fact the corporate sector always promotes short-term employment. As more and more Public Sector Units are being sold out by the Modi regime, more and more youth are placed at the doors of the corporate sector. Even big corporate houses offer short-term employment at a meagre compensation. Outsourcing is the name of the game. The poor casual worker does not know who actually is his/her employer.

As per the report of TOI, sixty percent of the employees of the private sector have neither the written job contract nor any kind of social security entitlement. Most of these casual employees do not get any paid leave. These temporary workers do not have the means and strength to fight their just rights. Unions do not exist here. Women are the worst sufferers. Motherhood for them would mean end of their job!

Whenever the economy stagnates, the casual workers are the first to bear the onslaught of the recession. Women are the first to be sent home. Then comes the number of the temporary workers. Since there are no unions in the unorganised sector, the poor workers are at the mercy of the contractors. The report says that the lowest earning people are the one who experience the deepest fall in income whenever there are rumblings in the market.

Modi government has played another trick. By keeping the poor people away from education, the employability of such people is reduced. It is an observation that when young people are not properly educated they seek early employment at the lowest remuneration. This suits the private companies well.

Popular Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar wrote on 23rd July 2024, that a growth rate of seven percent is possible only if 80,00,000 (eight million) jobs are created every year. The present regime is far away from this target.

When a big Public Sector Unit is handed over to a private company the first thing that the new owner does is reduce the strength of the work force. This immediately increases the profit range. As the work to be done remains same the existing employees have to remain on job for longer hours. Pro-capitalist columnists immediately start writing about the efficiency of the company under private players. They cleverly hide the fact that a number of workers lost their jobs and the remaining workers are being exploited daily. The enhanced profits are a reflection of the sweat and blood of the exploited workers. Recently one big capitalist of India called for a seventy hour work week, at Bangalore.

All the central trade unions immediately raised their voices against this proposal.

Just to make Jio profitable, 70,000 employees of BSNL were sent home in the name of VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme). In fact that scheme should have been called CRS (Compulsory Retirement Scheme). For some time Jio could shine, giving services at low cost. Once the BSNL customers changed to Jio, the real game started. Now Jio has become very costly and the customers want to return to BSNL. But the problem is that the BSNL is now understaffed. Unless the government immediately recruits new employees, customers would continue to suffer and youth would face unemployment.

Until few years back the total strength of Indian Railways was 1.9 million. Once the new economic regime started the number of workers in Indian Railways was progressively reduced. Today the strength of workers in Indian Railways is 1.2 million only. The unfortunate impact of this reduction has been on the safety and services. A series of accidents on the rail tracks is a testimony to the fact that in absence of Human Resources, even the best automation fails. In a country where we have abundance of technically educated human resource, any dependence on automation is uncalled for.

Today majority of Indians are young. Ours is the youngest population in the world. The best way to use this situation is to create more and more jobs for our young sons and daughters. This will not only boost up the growth rate of the country but also bring a lot of happiness into the millions of homes across this great land.

India will prosper only when Indians have a happy life! (IPA Service)