Thousands of Indians queuing up for jobs near the epicentre of a war raging thousands of kilometres away is a picture of sheer desperation. The job seekers standing in the bitter cold of Lucknow and Rohtak this week were hoping to get picked for the 10,000 construction jobs reportedly on offer in faraway Israel. These young men—clerks, drivers, shopkeepers and mechanics among them—could not find regular, well-paying jobs near home. It is the latest in a series of images that paints a grim picture of joblessness in the world’s most populous country. Tens of thousands of overqualified Indians have applied for a handful of government jobs on several occasions in the recent past.
On the face of it, the government’s latest Periodic Labour Force Survey tells a happy story—the unemployment rate in 2022-23 was at 3.2 percent, about half the 6 percent recorded in 2017-18. But a closer look reveals a bleaker picture—unpaid workers accounted for more than a third of the growth in India’s workforce since 2017-18. Azim Premji University’s latest State of Working India report offers a wider view. It shows how poorly paid most of the counted jobs are.
The share of salaried workers—who typically earn at least twice or thrice of those doing casual work—stagnated at below a quarter of the workforce between 2017 and 2021, even while the total workforce grew by 65 million. There are wide disparities between regions, too. Average salaries in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal were below Rs 10,000 in 2021-22, whereas those in Delhi, Goa and Mizoram earned more than double. Many standing in the queues in Lucknow and Rohtak were from the poorer eastern states.
The true picture is not hidden from those in power. With elections on the horizon, Bihar police recruited 70,000 people not long ago; the state has promised 1,40,000 new jobs in the health department soon. If the new Madhya Pradesh government wants to keep its promise of providing four lakh jobs in five years, it needs to give out about 190 jobs a day from here on. Let us keep the earlier untenable promises of “crores of jobs” in the rear-view mirror. The coming elections give Indian voters an opportunity to insist on realistic roadmaps for creating jobs. There cannot be a bigger issue in the world’s largest democracy.