As the country heads towards Lok Sabha elections, unemployment, inadequate job creation and development without employment are the concerns uppermost in public consciousness. The ruling party invariably has to encounter this question: Where are the jobs? It is true that every government promises to tackle unemployment. It promptly announces policies and programmes to fulfil the promise of creating more jobs. But at the end of its tenure, every government inevitably confronts the truth that a wide canyon separates its promise and performance, particularly in the job front. This predicament cuts across parties and economic policies.
And this script is repeated Creating jobs is indeed a daunting task. Macroeconomic policies meant to spur investment, facilitate flow of capital and augment the ease of doing business are all fine. Increase in government spending on public infrastructure projects too has an impact on job creation. But the major hazard is the inadequate realisation of the micro-realities on which well-intentioned policies have been repeatedly tripping.
Conceived and launched at the national level with unfailing fanfare, many flounder at the cutting edge. What is conveniently ignored or inadequately factored in is the heterogeneity of states and their official machinery that have to implement them. It needs to be recognised that political differences between the state and Centre play a crucial role in the pace and effectiveness of the implementation of the latter’s schemes. The political impulse is to hail the schemes if the state is ruled by the same party or an ally of the party at the Centre and to dismiss them as impractical if the state is ruled by an opposing party. Who takes the credit is the primary consideration, not making sure the people get maximum benefit from these schemes.
Unless this dangerous game is abandoned, any lofty promise will remain a mirage. Though it applies to all development initiatives, it hurts more when it comes to job-creating policies as their dynamics are more complex than other welfare schemes. Creating jobs in primary, secondary and tertiary sectors is a difficult mission. Every sector has its set of constraints that vary from region to region.
Agricultural distress in Vidarbha is different from that in Kerala’s Kuttanad. To create more jobs in the farm sector, the government would announce policies that make agricultural loans from banks easier. Interest subsidies and the focus on priority sector lending have not made much of a dent into the stranglehold of money lenders in rural areas and the consequential debt trap of farmers.
For the past several years the growth of industrial sector, particularly small and medium industries, has not been encouraging. The availability of credit remains an insurmountable problem for an aspiring entrepreneur. With stressed assets accumulating, banks are overcautious in lending. The same resistance is more acutely felt by those in the service sector. It is not denied that there are policy frameworks in place. Yet, when it comes to the everyday reality of a farmer or an entrepreneur, not much has changed. There is no ferment of helpfulness and facilitation in the air.
Attitudes and practices have not changed. Apathy has not been replaced with a spirit of service and handholding. Rampant corruption and its merciless tentacles have only grown threateningly. India might now rank higher on the global index of the ease of doing business. True, for the influential investor, things might have become easier. But an unemployed and aspiring young person trying to open a new industrial unit cannot trust the promises on the attractive promotional brochures of government departments. He has to necessarily dole out substantial money for the statutory clearances from government departments, local bodies and other agencies.
Institutionalised extortion from the local goons are a reality to reckon with, which few have the resilience to face. As long as procedures in thousands of government offices spread across India continue to function in the myopic and merciless style as they do today, creative ferment in the agricultural or industrial or service sectors will only evaporate sooner than later.
On the one hand, with corporate cartels calling the shots in several areas of government policies, the small enterprises face an unequal marketplace where their survival and success depend on factors on which even governments have little control. In such a perilous milieu, how do the farmer and the local entrepreneur survive an extortionist and indifferent bureaucracy and the play-it-safe approach of the banks? Curiously no party seems to be concerned about these sordid micro-realities. Macro policies are not the direct cause of farmer distress but the local realities are. Regardless of political differences, there has to be a national consensus. If this cannot be accomplished we will continue to wallow in hollow promises.
A necessary prerequisite to accomplish this and create employment in the various sectors is to have a truly federal polity that believes in cooperation, not combat. Once elected, governments have indeed an unwritten covenant to fulfil. Defiling governance with party politics has repeatedly retarded our progress. Ignoring unacceptable administrative and behavioural distortions at the state and district levels will only create the sickening loop of promises and frustrations. As Scott Peck wrote in his influential book of yesteryears, The Road Less Travelled, life is difficult and the moment one realises this, life becomes less difficult. This is equally true of the challenge of creating jobs.