Akshay Deshmane - Jobs Crisis: Over 20 Cr Indians May Be Unemployed Or In Bad Jobs By 2025
As the controversy over the track record of the Narendra Modi government
in job creation continues to simmer, a new book says that India is headed for a
much bigger crisis. “If the issues miring
both demand and supply in the job market are not addressed urgently, we are
looking at an economy in which over 20 crore people will be in ‘bad jobs’ or
even without jobs by 2025,” writes author and senior journalist Goutam Das
in Jobonomics.
In an interview
with HuffPost India, Das said the Modi government has been fighting
a perception war on jobs ever since it came to power. “And they are still
doing that now,” he said, referring to the unreleased National Sample Survey
Office (NSSO) report, which, Business Standard revealed, was at a 45-year
high in 2017-18. Das, however, gave
Modi credit for coming up with ideas such as Start Up India, Smart Cities, Digital
India, among others, but felt that they “haven’t taken off” because “there is a
talent deficit” of ministers who could implement these on the ground.
Edited excerpts
from an interview:
What is the central
argument that you make in the book?
My central argument is
India does not only have an unemployment crisis, it has an underemployment
crisis and we tend to ignore that part. The other central argument is the fact
that Indians are not productive. The underemployment is because of the fact
that we are not productive as a country. And why are we not productive? Because
we don’t have the skills. So it’s an equation; if you have the skills, you get
more productive; if you are more productive, you get better wages. This whole
chain is broken in India. Which is why there is an underemployment crisis.
I tell the stories of
both unemployment and underemployment. I tell the stories through real
reportage, lot of primary research backed up by data... read more:
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/over-20-cr-indians-may-be-in-bad-jobs-or-without-jobs-by-2025-says-new-book_in_5c59a9c9e4b09293b2086e24?utm_hp_ref=in-homepage
