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Essay on Unemployment Problem in India


1. Essay on Structural Unemployment:

India is a developing country in which poverty and unemployment is a main problem. Though India has made progress through different plans in all spheres, but high rate of population growth caused increase in the magnitude of poverty and unemployment during every plan-period.

At first, we will study the nature and types of unemployment in India, and what could be the policy, useful in removing these evils, in India the following nature of unemployment is found.

There is structural unemployment in India, that is, it is wholly related to the economic structure of the country. The main reason of unemployment is the sluggish growth in the number of jobs in comparison with number of jobs in seekers.

This is deeply related to the developing economy of India. Hence, it is a chronic malady. As the rate of capital formation is low, quantity jobs is also low. Growth in the working population and underdevelopment caused perpetual increase in the number of unemployed persons.

Many types of structural unemployment are found here:

(i) Disguised Unemployment:

In this type of unemployment apparently people are found employed but in reality, they are unemployed as they do not contribute in production. Even if some labourers are removed from the work, the production will be intact and unaffected. Hence it is called disguised unemployment.

Such type of unemployment is usually found in the rural areas, where there are more burdens on agriculture. In this unemployment, it is very difficult to distinguishing the actual number of the unemployed people.

(ii) Seasonal Unemployment:

This unemployment includes those persons who get job during some period of a year and for the remaining period they are jobless. This happens almost every year. Such unemployment is found in the agriculture sector in India. Agriculture is a seasonal occupation, which can provide employment for only some period during the year. Rest of the time people engaged in agriculture has no work of any kind, so they are unemployed at that time.

(iii) Under Employment:

This type of employment includes those people who do not get enough and full time work. There are two categories of such people, (a) One, those, who get work, which is lesser than their ability and capacity and (b) Second, those who do not get job for all the year, that is, they do not have full time job. For example an engineer gets a job of a clerk. Such labourers do contribute in production, but not that much, which they are capable to do.

(iv) Open Unemployment:

Open unemployment means the state in which persons has no work available, that is, they cannot do any work, which can provide regular income. So they are full time unemployed. This is due to lack of capital. Because of slow capital formation commerce and industry do not develop as expected. Hence job opportunities do not increase to cope up with the growth of labour power.

Among these different types of unemployment, India has the main problem of open unemployment, that is, to provide jobs for people who do not have any work, and even subsistence is difficult for them. They have the main problem of subsistence, while in disguised, short time and seasonal unemployment, people get same job to survive. Hence, the main problem of India is open unemployment.

2. Essay on Agricultural Unemployment:

The history of Indian agriculture is a chronicle of intermittent and progressive depression. Just as India has its depressed classes, she also has a depressed industry, viz., agriculture. Being normally in a depressed state, Indian agriculture is unable to sustain the vast majority of the people who seek livelihood from the soil. Although there is no permanent unemployment among the agriculturists, there is a fairly widespread seasonal or casual unemployment, and there is chronic under-employment.

Causes of Agricultural Unemployment:

The following are some of the causes responsible for the low efficiency of Indian agriculture:

(i) Increasing Pressure on the Soil:

The ever-increasing population of India is irresistibly drawn towards land in the absence of other handy and lucrative avenues of employment. Consequently about two thirds of the Indian population depend on agriculture and allied occupations.

(ii) Seasonal Nature of Agricultural Operations and Lack of Supplementary Industries:

There is a state of enforced idleness in the rural areas of India for three to four months in a year. The period of involuntary unemployment varies from tract to tract. In the well-irrigated tracts, the farmer is busy almost throughout the year. In the canal colonies, he is kept engaged in their vocation for nine or ten months in a year.

But in barani areas, the farmers may have to remain idle for 5 to 7 months in a year. According to the Krishnamachari (G.M.F.) Enquiry Committee, 1952, roughly 4/5ths of the agricultural population is unemployed or under-employed for nearly 2/3rds of the year and the remaining 1/5th is idle for nearly 1/3ra of the year.

If our farmer’s ad combined with agriculture some supplementary industries, like dairying, poultry, sericulture, bee-keeping, etc., they would have kept themselves profitably employed throughout. But that is not the case.

(iii) The extension of area under cultivation has not kept pace with the increase in the farming population.

(iv) There has been no appreciable improvement in the farming technique.

(v) Uneconomic size of holdings is another handicap.

(vi) Rains are either inadequate or untimely or there are floods making agricultural operations impossible or damaging whatever is grown. Indian agriculture is said to be a gamble in the rains.

(vii) The subsistence nature of agricultural economy and its unplanned nature are also responsible for its backwardness.

(viii) The Indian farmer is in a state of chronic indebtedness and he utterly lacks capital.

(ix) Inefficient marketing also accounts for its un-profitableness.

Remedies:

Reconstruction of Indian agriculture seems to be absolutely essential if periodic and seasonal ebbs of unemployment have to be avoided. Its nature as subsistence farming must change. Methods of cultivation must undergo a revolutionary change; agricultural technique must be stepped up. Irrigation facilities must be improved so that Indian agriculture does not remain at the mercy of the rains.

The system of marketing must be rationalised. We must introduce crop planning. Area under cultivation must be increased by means of land reclamation schemes. Use of chemical manures, better seeds, better system of crop rotation, better sowing and better drainage are some of the other measures that can be adopted to improve agriculture and decrease unemployment.

But the adoption of better methods of farming hinges on one important factor, viz., the size of the holding. Unless the size of agricultural holdings is reasonably enlarged, there is no hope of modernising Indian agriculture.

Above all, agricultural unemployment can be effectively remedied if there is evenness of population pressure. There are too many people on land now. The surplus of the rural population must be weaned away from agriculture and must be absorbed in trade and industry.

Fundamental organisational changes are also called for. In the absence of organisational changes, other remedies may prove to be mere palliatives. We should introduce group farming. As S. Tarlok Singh puts it in his book Poverty and Social Change, “Without group control over the management of land it is not possible to create an organisational framework for bridging about a better agriculture for assuring equality and freedom to suppressed groups, for integrating the moral and industrial economy, and finally for creating new social values and incentives.”

According to the Agricultural Labour Enquiry, the level of rural unemployment in 1950-51 was of the order of 2.8 million. The First Plan failed to solve the problem. During the Second Plan period the new rural entrants to the labour force were estimated at 6.2 million. The Second Plan did not make any significant contribution to the solution of the unemployment problem.

Special efforts were made to create jobs in the community development areas. But according to a recent survey conducted by the Planning Commission the impact of the community development programme on unemployment problem has been disappointing.

A Rural Works programme of which a great deal was expected has made little progress, having found only 78,000 jobs at a cost of Rs. 160 lakhs up to the end of March 1963 and the Third Plan target of rural employment is nowhere in sight.

Rural industrialisation of the right type can do a lot in relieving rural unemployment. Subsidizing inefficient modes of production and perpetuating obsolete techniques would never solve either the problem of increased production or of providing more jobs.

3. Essay on Industrial Unemployment:

Here again, we are faced with a statistical black out. We have no reliable figures to assess the incidence of industrial unemployment in our country.

For a long time our industries suffered from shortage of labour supply. Neither the wage nor the living conditions in the cities were attractive enough to secure adequate labour supply. The Indian worker has been a farmer by preference and a mill hand by necessity.

The industrial workers were fugitives from the rural areas “to escape from destitution or social disabilities or from the penalties of law or from the severe penalties with which the village visits offences against its social and moral codes. Few industrial workers would remain in industry if they could secure food and clothing in the village; they are pushed and not pulled to the city.”

The industrialists thus experienced great scarcity of labour. Labour was migratory and not permanent. The worker would always wistfully look back at the village and would leave for home at the earliest possible opportunity.

Why this Industrial Unemployment?

Our industrial system is unable to absorb our growing population and for this there are several reasons:

(i) The industrial development in the country is immature and inadequate. The expansion of the industrial structure in India is not commensurate either with its vast resources or with the growth of its population.

(ii) The location of industries is very defective and uneconomic. There is overcrowding in certain centres which inevitably raises the cost of production. If the geographical distribution of industrial units had been rationally planned, the industrial structure would have been more economical and its capacity to absorb workers would have infinitely increased.

(iii) The subsistence economy prevalent in our rural areas prevents the development of an adequate market for our industrial products.

(iv) Our export industries have not been able to maintain their hold on foreign markets. There has been thus diminution of employment in export industries which is transmitted to other industrial sectors.

(v) The cost structure is very rigid and does not respond to changes in the prices of industrial goods. Consequently our industries are periodically overwhelmed by depression which brings about unemployment.

(vi) Fall in the purchasing power of the people due to inflation is another cause. This has led to contraction in demand for goods.

(vii) Rationalisation of certain industries has also thrown some labour out of employment.

It’s Remedy:

The remedy for industrial unemployment lies in stepping up industrial efficiency. Our industrial structure needs a thorough overhauling. Most of our industries need going through a process of rationalisation so that waste of all kinds is eliminated and industrial efficiency is raised to the highest possible pitch.

Over-centralisation of industries will have to be rectified, the quality of the raw materials improved, technical training imparted to labour, capital resources mobilised, managerial skill improved and industrial organisation generally galvanised.

Apart from removing the shortcomings of the existing industrial structure, it will be necessary to launch far-reaching schemes of industrial development. Luckily, the Second Five Year Plan lays a proper emphasis on the development of industries. The spirit of Swadeshi must be revived and intensified.

The import policy should be so formulated as to encourage domestic industries. Industries should be helped to work to the fullest installed capacity. No factory should be allowed to close without Government permission. Compensation should be paid to those who are thrown out of employment in consequence of rationalisation.

Small-scale and cottage industries should be actively encouraged. The fact can hardly be over-emphasised that it is to industry alone that we can look forward to absorb the rising surge of the unemployed. Agriculture is already overcrowded, and so are the liberal professions. Development of industry is our solitary hope to relieve us from the miseries of unemployment.

When our industry rises to its full stature, the stature to which it has every right to rise, unemployment will vanish. India has better chances of solving this problem of unemployment through the development of industries than many advanced countries.

Our industrial structure is yet in a state of infancy and there is a great scope for further expansion.

4. Essay on Unemployment among the Educated Classes:

The problem of the educated unemployed constitutes a very serious and menacing problem. The educated unemployed are a dangerous person. He is vocal; he has influence; he nurses a sense of personal injury and, if the grievance is long continued and the numbers involved are large, as it is in India, the situation will be decidedly explosive, and will constitute, a constant threat to the security and stability of the State. The unemployed persons belonging to this category are not ‘dumb-driven cattle’ but intelligent people, and will not accept an unenviable position lying down.

Why are the Educated People Unemployed?

The existence of unemployment among the educated classes is attributed to the too literary character of education. The system of education prevalent in India is divorced from real life. There is a mass production of graduates for the absorption of which no adequate demand exists.

Our education takes a young man straight to MA, after which, if he does not get a suitable job, he is doomed. There are very few alternative openings which can hold out prospects of a respectable living for young man who maintain a high standard during their academic careers.

Our system of education has elicited sharp comments. One witness stated before the Punjab Unemployment Committee in 1927 that Lord Macaulay’s system of education “was meant to create a class of translators to serve purely as interpreters. Education has let these interpreters remain as interpreters and nothing more, with the addition that anything real is gone and the rest is all imitation and chaff where there is no place for anything conducive to make a human being of an Indian.”

Sir George Anderson, the President of the Punjab Unemployment Committee of 1927, himself admitted that the present system of education in its very inception was moulded with the special object of preparing boys for external examinations and training them for clerical vocations, and he described the matriculate product of the system as a “derelict, a wanderer on the face of the earth, unemployed because he is unemployable.” It has been said that “the present education turns out no better stuff than indifferent babus”. A diploma is regarded as a “magic passport to government service”.

We can see that the system of education is defective. It is not calculated to equip a person satisfactorily for the struggle of life. The medium of instruction which is a foreign language means a tremendous strain on the immature youths and is sure to retard mental development.

There are no two opinions about the defective nature of our educational system. Presiding over the All-India National Educational Conference held at Wardha in October 1936. Mahatma Gandhi observed- “The present system of education does not meet the requirements of the country in any shape or form. English having been made the medium of instruction in all the higher branches of learning has created a permanent bar between the highly educated few and the uneducated many. It has prevented knowledge from percolating to the masses. The excessive importance given to English has cast upon the educated class a burden which has maimed them mentally for life and made them strangers in their own land.”

Again, “absence of vocational training has made the educated class almost unfit for productive work and harmed them physically”. Now that India is free, we may soon expect a drive towards educational reconstruction.

The medium of instruction has already been changed in many States from English to Hindi, the national language, or the regional language.

Extent of Unemployment among Educated Classes:

It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of the unemployed persons among educated classes. But the absence of reliable statistics does not indicate the absence of unemployment. On the contrary, the fact is well-known that a large number of educated persons are not able to secure employment.

It is a common experience of all employers that hundreds of applicants scramble for a petty job. There were in 1953, 118,000 matriculates and graduates on the live registers of the employment exchanges. There was an increase of about 45,000 in the number of applicants for clerical posts between January 1952 and May 1953.

In 1950, 45,000 were placed in employment by the exchanges in jobs carrying emoluments of Rs. 30 per month and less. The number fell to about 44,000 in 1951 and to less than 16,000 in 1952. In the category of posts carrying emoluments of Rs. 30 to Rs. 60 per month, the number of placing fell from 2,44,000 in 1950 to 2,10,000 in 1952 and in the first quarter of 1953 to less than 30,000. The Indian Universities have been manufacturing graduates and matriculates at a terrific speed.

Since 1947-48 the number of matriculates has increased by something like 130%, intermediates by 100% and non-professional degree holders by about 6%. The number of graduates sent out by the Indian Universities was 20,646 in 1937-38 and it rose to 46,432 in 1948-49 and has increased manifold by now.

A study undertaken by the Manpower Division of the Directorate of Employment Exchanges, Ministry of Labour and Employment, of the pattern of unemployment among graduates as on May 15, 1957, showed that graduate unemployment was more widespread in West Bengal, U.P., Bombay and Delhi than in other States.

The highest incident of unemployment among women graduates was in Kerala. About 93% of the unemployed seeking employment was men and about 7% women, 48% of the unemployed graduates were B.A.’s, 22.7%, B.Sc’s and 12.1% B.Com’s.

Remedies:

The obvious remedy is the reform of the system of education. Educational facilities should be more diversified so that the education imparted to our youth is not purely literary. Institutions for technical and occasional training should be multiplied, so that our young men are enabled to learn a craft and to start small cottage industries on their own account. This would obviate the need for seeking a job with some employer.

But economic development must proceed pari passu with educational reform. It is necessary to create jobs and not merely enough to fit people for the jobs. Only economic and industrial development of the country can multiply the jobs available for the people. The real remedy, therefore, is the fullest exploitation of the resources of the country and carrying through a comprehensive development plan so that opportunities of employment may be multiplied.

There is, in India, undoubtedly widespread unemployment among all classes in normal times. A great deal of distinguished or concealed unemployment or under-employment exists. The cause which lies at the bottom of all types of unemployment is the economic backwardness of the country.

The productive resources of the country have not been fully and properly exploited. This being the case, the only remedy is to accelerate economic development and make it commensurate both with the resources as well as the growing population of the country.

The Government seems to be fully alive to this serious situation of unemployment in the country and have already taken steps to meet it. The Finance Minister told the House of the People on September 4, 1953, that the Government of India had proposed a special education expansion programme to provide employment to the educated unemployed at an estimated cost of Rs. 14.7 crores.

The Commerce and Industry Minister assured the House of the People that investment in the public sector would be kept up to relieve unemployed. The Central Government asked the State Governments to handle the problem of educated unemployment as an emergency and send their proposals to the Ministry of Education.

The Minister for Planning told the house of the People on March 4, 1954, that the definite schemes had been received from the State Governments for solving rural and urban unemployment. These schemes had been considered and finalised. Arrangements had been made for the expeditious sanction of finances by the Centre, which had also the machinery to watch the implementation of the schemes.

The Planning Commission formulated an 11-point programme to fight unemployment:

(1) Establishment of work and training camps at places where work opportunities have been provided, e.g., in projects for slum clearance, housing for low-income groups, irrigation and power projects, road construction programmes, afforestation and soil conservation and co-operative land settlement projects, etc.

(2) Special assistance is to be provided to individual or small groups of people for establishing small industry and business under the States Aid to Industries Acts.

(3) Active encouragement to be given to the products of cottage and small-scale industries through the purchase of stores required by State Governments and public authorities.

(4) Municipal authorities, private educational institutions and voluntary organisations are to be assisted in establishing adult education centres in urban areas. In rural areas, opening of teacher schools should be encouraged.

(5) Expansion of training facilities in those lines in which manpower shortage at present exists. Expanded training facilities are to be provided to meet these shortages.

(6) The National Extension Service should be established in as much as it is fundamental to the growth of rural economy in India and is expected to make immediate contribution towards the solution of the problem of educated unemployment.

(7) Development of road transport.

(8) Implementation of slum clearance schemes and programmes for the construction of houses for low-income groups in urban areas.

(9) Encouragement of private building activities.

(10) Planned assistance to refugee townships with a view to developing a sound economic basis for their continued existence.

While recommending that as many of the educated persons as possible should be absorbed in the national Extension Service and in other activities, the Commission emphasised that the measures for opening out useful avenues prior to the university stage should be attached a very great importance, otherwise the problem of educated unemployment will be impossible of solution.


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