One of the vital issues discussed and debated in India is the social problem of unemployment. It surfaces unfailingly with redoubled vigour during polls. Arguments and counter arguments of ideological slant emerge. At the same time it would be prudent to put the historical developments of the mid 20th century in perspective.
The production processes started with a bang all over the country well before Independence, but ended with a whimper with the passage of time. It is imperative to at least now think why the manufacturing sector in the 1960s and 70s switched over to a capital-intensive regime from being a labour-intensive regime. The reasons are not far to seek.
There were, of course, disputes in industries which were well within the established norms and had adhered to the guidelines as laid down in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Nevertheless illegal strikes and lockouts were also not uncommon. The instigators of violence had either slipped into hibernation later on or conveniently moved aside after driving the contentious issues to a point of no return. The owners of viable production units in all sectors deemed it fit to disband their traditional domains and settle for an alternative with no tensions of maintenance.
The ultimate sufferers were the gullible employees belonging to middle and lower classes who lost their resources, assured placement and tranquillity. Some of them lost their lives too. Further, the labourers were shielded from understanding the shrewd machination and dynamics of the vested interests perpetrating industrial discard. It is learnt from reliable sources that in India, from 1950 to 1970, labour disputes had tripled.
Labourers who had acquired skills of a defined nature had to end up as raw beginners in other avenues or were left jobless due to forced closure of industries. Of course, the politically conscious and decidedly non-partisan observers of the mid 20th century were witnesses to this pitiable spectacle.
This was almost the plight of the farm hands in recent decades in the Delta districts of Tamil Nadu. Thousands were subjected to distress migrations to even places far north. Though the issues of the agricultural labour force were of a different order, they too were victims of poverty, indebtedness, hunger, squalor, etc., as Cauvery had gone dry, not to speak of the shrewd machination of vested interests.
Be that as it may, India has come a long way, learnt from her experience and made significant strides in the process of industrialisation and agriculture in many states. We have moved to a new era and are now seeing a resurgent India due to shifts from an output regime to one of value additions, and from large-scale machine dominated industrial regime to start up regime.
The morbid sentimentalism that had gripped the psychology of the residents of rural and semi urban settlements governed by familial ties, kinship attachment to land and inexorable social law is on the wane in recent decades. The IT revolution has ignited the propensity to migrate. Of course the core values of village India still remain, albeit visible changes in the structure and functions, as agriculture is the mainstay of a majority of Indians today. It is needless to say that in different proportions one finds an interplay of westernisation and modernisation with deep rooted traditions of India. Hence sociologists have rightly called this subcontinent a melting pot of different cultures.
It is only in the backdrop of this scenario the aims of new India including employment generation have to be realised. In this regard the aspirations of the various sections of the country comprising adivasis, farmers, rural women and skilled youth of urban and rural middle classes will have to be assessed and met.
Taking into account the country’s ever growing taste in sartorial fashion, educated youth turning to agriculture and the ever increasing desire of people to visit places of interest, job opportunities may be created for the youth of this country in areas like textile design, value addition of agricultural produce and hospitality industry.
Another area where India is on her way to attain global supremacy is the health sector. This country happens to be one of the most preferred destination for health seekers from all over the world, the reason being the availability of best medical attention at an affordable cost. Overseas patients receive the guidance from public relations officers on the right place and cost. The government must explore technical training for such aspirant PROs for generating jobs as well as prescribing standards for such professions.
In this context it is absolutely necessary to assess intensely, the social organisation, especially when administrators are geared to generate job opportunities. Therefore appropriate research tools should be constructed to assess the attitudes, values and beliefs and location-specific abilities of people spread across a multitude of villages in India. This will go a long way in micro- level planning aimed at employment generation.
The failure to ascertain the felt needs of people with regard to development schemes invariably gives rise to distorted information by vested interests. A concerted action to assess the mood of the people and evaluate their requirements on matters concerning jobs through carefully planned empirical research, is the need of the hour. After all, projects are meant for the well-being of the masses as the saying goes thus ‘vox populi, vox dei’.