Unemployability: Bigger crisis in India

pratikbharti

pratikbharti

Pratik Bharti
As the country launches itself on a higher growth trajectory but with rising unemployment, a report says that unemployability is a bigger crisis than unemployment.

"About 53 per cent of employed youth suffer some degree of skill deprivation while only 8 per cent of youth are unemployed," says India Labour Report 2007.

The report prepared by one of India's largest staffing company, TeamLease Services, adds, "57 per cent of India's youth suffer some degree of unemployability."

It adds that India has joined the big league of a trillion-dollar economy, despite a high level of unemployment and illiteracy.

Noting that the present education system needs to be improved, the report says, "90 per cent of employment opportunities require vocational skills but 90 per cent of our college/school output has bookish knowledge."

The report also points out that 300 million youth will enter the labour force by 2025 and 25 per cent of the world's workers in the next four years will be Indians.

"The skill deficit hurts more than the infrastructure deficit because it sabotages equality of opportunity and amplifies inequality while poor infrastructure maintains inequality (it hits rich and poor equally)," it adds.

"The unfinished education and training reform agenda denies our youth the economic equivalent of a right to vote. It perpetuates inequality of opportunity because unemployability is now a bigger problem than unemployment," says Manish Sabharwal, chairman, TeamLease Services.

"Repairing this needs money (10 per cent of GDP) but money not accompanied by structural change will be ineffective; we not only need more cooks in the kitchen but a different recipe," Sabharwal adds. The skill deficit is more damaging than the infrastructure deficit but it's financing and delivery has seen less policy action, he adds.

Pointing out that the penetration level of our education system is low, the report adds that in the working age group of 15-60, almost 40 per cent of the population is not literate.

Thrusting the need for vocational training the report says that only 7 per cent of the population in the 15-29 age group has received some form of vocational training.

"Globally, two broad approaches have been followed towards achieving enhanced employability. The first one dealing with reforms in the education system accompanied with a second approach of creating an enhanced focus on ensuring lifelong learning opportunities for the nation's working group," says the report.

It adds that unless basic principles are integrated into the systems and specific strategies set out to raise the employability of the growing workforce, the mirage of 'a large pool of skilled labour' in India will continue to place brakes on growth.

The report also states that the Indian human resource pyramid has to be based on a strong and vibrant school education system. Any changes made to higher education establishments will not bear the desired outcome if schools across the country fail to throw up a large base of well-trained youth.

"As a natural growth pattern, this strong base then needs to be given adequate options towards vocational training. The critical pillar in the strategy to tackle the employability challenge is thus the school education system. The next is vocational training," the report says.
 
It is hard to agree that the responsibility solely lies with the FORMAL education system alone. Within the given limitations of the course, the formal education can do only so much!! What with much opposition even to moral education, it is difficult and expensive to prepare secular soft skills program instead of teaching our mythology stories like Ramayan etc...So the alternative is for corporates to catch them...Employees young and train them early on in Soft skills and other required employment skills. But with Competetion increasing, corporates are not willing to invest with long term commitment. Hence the nation as a whole suffers. One solution is that the Government should give Tax exemption to corporates for training purposes and Social training purposes.
 
Unemployment up among the disabled: Study

A World Bank report has found levels of unemployment increasing among disabled persons in the country.

The study commissioned by the Government of India and based on a sample of 2,000 households in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh says that employment rate among people with disability (PWD) fell from 42.7 per cent in 1991 down to 37.6 per cent in 2002.

The five percentage point difference results in part from the different sample as people with mental illness and retardation were not counted as PWD in the 47th round but were in the 58th round, where they were the PWD sub groups with the lowest employment rates.

However, the finding of a reduced employment rate among PWD between the early 1990s and the early 2000s holds even when mental illness and mental retardation people are omitted from the 58th round sample.

Excluding MI and MR, the study says that the employment rate of PWD still stands at 39.6 in 2002 i.e. 3.1 percentage points lower than in 1991. This compares to a fall of only 1.1 percentage points for the general population (from 58.6 to 57.5 per cent) between 1993 and 2000, the report points out.

The report finds no explanation for this decline in employment rates over a decade among people with disability. Says lead author Philip O'Keefe: "We are still looking for answers for this one. I feel better reporting and better awareness about the matter could explain the figures partly."

The report, People with Disabilities in India: From Commitments to Outcomes, concludes that further research is needed to understand the determinants of the decline in the job rate of persons with physical and sensory disabilities between 1991 and 2002, particularly to assess if it results from changes in the demographic composition of the population with disabilities, in the increased severity of disability or factors in the labour market and society.

The report goes on to say that fall in the employment rates of PWD relative to the general working age population during the 1990s is almost universal across the country except Sikkim. But the extent of the relative decline varies.

States like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra exhibit small falls in the PWD/non PWD employment ratios, while others like J& K, Bihar, and Assam have seen large falls in the relative employment position of PWD.

A further aspect of the unfair gap between the employment rates of the PWD and the general working age population is the variations between the two in the levels of education.

The study says that the gap in employment rates between the two is more pronounced for those with the lowest levels of education in both periods. The gap in employment levels has widened for all education levels, the study shows.

For the illiterate PWD population, their employment rate was 64 per cent of the of the general illiterate population in the early 1990s. This fell sharply to 47 per cent by the early 2000s. Not only have PWDs lost out in employment terms in 1990s, but those likely to be the poorest have lost out proportionately more, the report says.
 
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