TRACKING INDIA’S WORKFORCE

As a business journalist, doing scores of interviews, I was quite surprised to hear many CEOs echoing one common  problem “It is so difficult to get labour”, in factories, in offices, blue collar workers, white collar workers. Agricultural families tell me that their children don’t want to work at the farms.  So what is the majority of India’s burgeoning population up to? (today 1.22 billion)

A recent National Sample Survey Organisation or NSSO report reveals that only 2 million jobs were generated between 2004-2009 even as the economy grew at the rate of 8.43%. As against 62 million jobs created between 1999-2004. What the data also reveals is that the employment rate has actually declined in the five year period ended 2009-10 to 39.2 per cent from 42 per cent in 2004-05.

Merely taking these three major facts – 1) Industry facing shortage of workforce 2)  Survey indicating creation of fewer jobs 3) India economy growing -  underlines a very systemic problem that India faces in its job market. This  needs immediate attention.

NSSO brings out a very interesting fact defending lack of job creation - that people are moving out of menial jobs and going back to school. That marks a very important trend – that aspirations of workforce are changing combined with shift in literacy levels. Literacy levels are rising – up at 74% in 2011 from 65% in 2001. Literacy trends too are changing - Poor families  today spend 40% of their salaries on children’s ‘ENGLISH’ education so that they become a part of prosperous India.

All this data leads us to yet another important outcome of rising aspirations and literacy. Post the worst industrial violence at automobile plant of Maruti Suzuki few months back, Economic & Political Weekly states that “there is a growing realization among a section of the managerial and capitalist class that old forms of exploitation and oppression of labour are perhaps not sustainable. This is partly due to the diffusion of media in its social and mobile forms., partly a function of increased literacy and education, and thus awareness, of the worker, or a bit of conscience among the opinion makers”.

So what is the outcome of connecting all these dots, what policy actions need to be taken, what are the course corrections methods being employed, how is the education system being veered towards these changes, how is the mix between agriculture (15%), industrial (27%)  and tertiary (58%) affecting workforce.