KOCHI: Citing the number of unemployed youth, the number of young people leaving the state, and the investor suicides in Kerala, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, on Thursday, urged a review and revision of the legislation to remove outdated laws that stop the establishment of businesses in Kerala and proposed a change in the university curriculum for more job creation.
Speaking at the conference, Pioneering Growth: Transforming Kerala, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation in Kochi, Tharoor also took a dig at the ruling Left government, saying the hartals in Kerala have come down because "the principal perpetrators are in power."
"Young people are leaving the state and wishing to leave the state. About 33 per cent of the youngsters wish to go abroad for higher studies as there are no suitable jobs for them," he said.
According to Tharoor, there are around two lakh technical and professional job seekers registered in Kerala's employment exchange.
"Around half of them are diploma holders, and 44,000 are engineering graduates. The All India Professional Congress conducted a survey and found that there are around 60,000 unemployed engineering graduates and 66 per cent of them were in jobs that do not require an engineering degree," he said, adding that this mismatch reflects the fundamental problem in our education system.
"The skills being imparted through our education are not aligned to the skills in demand. The skills that are required in the market are not available. When other states face a shortage in the number of doctors, unfortunately, we have 6,000 doctors registered in the employment exchange," said Tharoor.
There are obviously strengths for Kerala. "The biggest strength of Kerala is our extraordinary literacy rate. The women of the US and Kerala have the same life expectancy of 79 years. When the US trajectory is going downward, Kerala's in the next decade will be 80. The gender ratio in the US is 1,021 females for 1,000 males, while in Kerala it is 1,121 females for 1,000 males. We have as many hospital beds and nurses," he pointed out.
Youth, young men and women under the age of 25, constitute more than 23 per cent of the population in the state, which is not very much, he said. "In India as a whole, the figure is 50.1 per cent. Kerala is undoubtedly ageing, and even with these astonishingly low figures, our youth unemployment rate is 40 per cent. The saddest part is that most unemployed youth are skilled and educated. In fact, that is something that is very shameful," Tharoor said.
"When every other state in India has experienced the horror of farmer suicides, only one state has seen phenomenal investor suicides, and that is Kerala. In those last 10 years, three investors famously committed suicide. For a number of reasons, overregulation, excessive bureaucracy, the politicisation of every process, and the hartals, which are mercifully less as the principal perpetrators are in power, We need to come up with a solution," he said
"We need to review all the regulations. In the US and Singapore, it takes only three days to open a business. In India, it takes 114 days on average to open a business. In Kerala, it takes 236 days. Why should that be? There is absolutely no justification for the number of procedures and regulations. We need to review all the legislation and update it to remove outdated laws and restrictions," the Thiruvananthapuram MP remarked.
He also added: "We need to bring in an investor protection act. Investors who have been intimidated by previous stories should come in with confidence in the particular law that protects them. We need to review and revise our university curriculum. We need to set an example in Kerala by connecting our universities to companies."