Indian
constitution under Article 43 of chapter on directive principle of state policy
directs the state to ensure living wage for workers. The constitution
through Art
43A also wants state
to ensure participation of workers in management of industries. Despite more
than 60years of Indian independence both the directives have largely been
ignored by successive governments in India. This has resulted in living
wage still being distant dreams for tens of crores of workers in the country.
Policies of Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization under diktat of
International finance capital was justified by the ruling classes in India on
the contention that it will lead to economic growth and will thus assist in job
creation in the country. These neo liberal policies have largely succeeded only
in generating jobless growth in the country. During the first decade of
liberalization the unemployment rate in
India has increased significantly
since 1993-94 and was above 7.3 per cent in 1999-2000 compared to 6.0 per cent
in 1993-94 on Current Daily Status basis. (Source:
http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/tsk_sg10m.pdf).
It is apprehended that now these rates have increased further. The total volume
in terms of person unemployed has touched about 27 million in 1999-2000. Nearly
74 per cent of them are in the rural sector and 60 per cent among them
educated. In some States and in certain sections of labour force, the
unemployment rate has increased to more than 25 per cent. The rising
unemployment is primarily an outcome of a declining job creating capacity of
growth, observed since 1993-94. The employment growth fell to 1.07 per cent per
annum (between 1993-94 and 1999-2000) from 2.7 per cent per annum in the past
(between 1983 and 1993-94) in spite of acceleration in GDP growth from 5.2 per
cent between 1983 and 1993-94 to 6.7 per cent between 1993-94 and 1999-2000. It
means that the capacity of job creation per unit of output went down about
three times compared to that in the 80s and early 90s. This is primarily
because of-
(i) The policy of shedding excess labour that this
sector is carrying in order to meet the growing market competition, often known
as rightsizing;
(ii) The trend towards increasing capital
intensity per unit of output; and
(iii) The pattern of
growth moving in favour of capital intensive sectors.
The pattern has largely continued in
second decade of liberalization. Since then,
India seems to have managed to
achieve and sustain high growth, except for the brief downturn during the
global crisis. Yet the recently released results from the 2009-10 (66th Round)
NSSO survey are disconcerting. Over the five-year period 2004-05 to 2009-10
employment declined at an annual rate of -0.34 per cent in rural areas, and
rose at the rate of just 1.36 per cent in urban area. The agrarian distress
resulting in suicides by lakhs of farmers in last two decades seems to be prima
facie the primary reason for fall in employment in rural areas. In the aggregate, the volume of principal and
subsidiary status employment rose by a negligible 0.1 per cent. (Source
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Chandrasekhar/article2153082.ece?css=print).
According to NSSO data, there are
nearly 30 million more young people putting themselves through more education
in the hope of being able to access better jobs. The total numbers of such
youth in secondary and tertiary education is at least 55 million. Soon, perhaps
even within the next five years, these young people will enter the job market
and expect to access employment that is at least minimally commensurate with
the efforts they have put in to receive more education. But in the previous
five-year period, all forms of employment (regular and casual, paid work as
well as self-employment) only increased by around 28 million. If this sluggish
pace of job creation continues, there will be even larger gaps between
aspiration and reality in India's
labour markets. That such a combination is a recipe for enhanced social
tensions and political unrest is well known and has been reinforced by recent
experience across the world. If only for that reason, surely the government
should sit up to take notice of its own data? The dangerous trend on employment
front is also collaborated by data on employment exchanges which are given as
follows-
The salient features of the
trends of data on employment exchanges are given as under:
As on 31st
December 2009, 381.52 lakh persons were registered with employment
exchanges as compared to 391.15 lakh as on 31st December 2008.
On an average,
around 57 lakh job seekers get registered with the Employment
exchanges per year during
the last ten years.
The total
number of vacancies notified during each of the years between 2000 and
2009 varied between 2.2
and 5.7 lakh. The highest (5.7 lakh) was in 2008 and
lowest (i.e. 2.2 lakh)
was in 2002.
Number of
vacancies notified to the Employment Exchanges has come down to 4.2 lakh in
2009 from 5.7 lakh in 2008.
The placement,
which was of the higher order of 3.05 lakh in the year 2008, has
dipped to 2.62 lakh in
the year 2009.
Out of the
total number of vacancies (4.2 lakh) notified during 2009, around 63%
(2.62 lakh) were filled
through the Employment Exchanges.
Placement to
submission ratio was only around 10.1% at the all- India level during 2009.
The profile of job seekers
in terms of age group and education is given below-
Age-wise distribution of the job seekers on the Live Register (L.R.) for
the years
2004-2008 the following: -
Approximately 69 % of the jobseekers were up to
the age of 29 years.
The absolute
number of job seekers in the age group of 20 to 39 years, which
was approximately 72.6 % of total number of job seekers in the year 2004,
has
only marginally gone down to 72.2% in 2008.
The number of
job seekers in the age group of 30 years & above has
marginally increased
during the period 2008 as compared to 2007. The
percentage of job-seekers
in the age group of 30 and above to the total
number of job-seekers
which was of the order of 30.1% in 2007 has also gone
up to 31.1% in 2008.
The major share of job-seekers awaiting jobs in the Employment Exchanges
was
that of educated persons. Year-wise details of the educated job-seekers are
given in
Table-5.
Around 43 lakh educated
jobseekers got registered themselves with the
employment exchanges during the year 2008.
The percentage of educated
job-seekers to the total job-seekers has increased
from 71.0 % at the end of 1999 to 74.8% at the end of 2008. This is an
indicative
of the fact that over the years educational profile of jobseekers is
continuously
improving.
While educated Live Register is
around 74.8 % of the total live register, educated
placement is around only 68.3 % of total placements.
The maximum number of
job-seekers (131.6 lakh i.e. 45 %) was educated up to
Xth.
Higher Secondary and Under
Graduate or XIIth pass accounted for 83.04 lakh
(28.4.%) and Graduate and above were 77.9 lakh (26.6 %).
Among the Graduates and above
educated, maximum number of jobseekers
(31.6 lakh, 40.5% of total Graduates) was from Arts discipline. Science and
science related subjects’ job-seekers number was comparatively less.
The
observation of
Lourdes Beneria in 2001 paper which states that the processes of informalization of jobs observed
during the past decades have affected both high and low-income countries. Starting
at the micro level of the firm, it analyzes the factors in economic
restructuring and globalization that tend to generate the growth of informal
activities - resulting in a vicious circle of poverty and economic insecurity
for an important proportion of the population (source
http://www.ilo.int/public/english/protection/ses/download/docs/gender.pdf)
has largely come true in Indian scenario. Globalization of economies promoted
through American model of neo-liberal economic policies has largely resulted in
casualization of jobs at worldwide level as brought out in following table-
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Trends
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in
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Regions
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informal sector in percentage in non-agriculture segment)
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1980-89
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1990-99
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North
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Africa
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38.8
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43.4
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Sub-Saharan
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Africa
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68.1
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74.8
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Latin
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America
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52.3
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56.9
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Asia
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53
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63
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Source:
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Charmes,
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2000
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(estimates
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based on national sources)
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This trend has also
been witnessed in India
during the last two decades as organized sector continues to generate less than
10 percent of employment in the country. Due to roll back of government from
providing social services like education, health, housing under diktat of
neoliberal policies number of government jobs are regularly shrinking. Private
sector despite all the incentives has not been able to generate commensurate
jobs to compensate for loss of jobs in public sector. Due to this the share of
labour in the gross value added has been declining consistently from 20.5 per
cent in 1991-92 to 9 per cent in 2007-08. However, it is important to note, he
said, that during the same time the profit rate of the manufacturing companies
has increased from 14.6 per cent in 1991 to 53.8 per cent in 2007-08. This
shows that that there has been reckless violation of labour laws for maximizing
profit. Indian Labour Conference regularly emphasis on strengthening the
enforcement of labour laws especially related to contract labour has largely
fallen in deaf years as government allowed violation of labour laws across the
country due to pressure from private sector for ex the recommendation of second
National Labour Conference that contract worker who have complemented two years
should be deemed permanent need to be implemented forthwith by the government. Recommendation of Conference Committee on “Global Financial Downturn – Its Impact – Job Losses – Comprehensive Package for Protection of Labour
Force etc” like strict implementation of labour laws on lay-offs, retrenchment,
job losses, closures, the broad based social security including unemployment
insurance should be devised, the scope of Public Distribution System be
extended to all unorganized workers in terms of commodities and coverage etc (source : http://labour.nic.in/lc/43ilc/RecordNoteofDiscussionAmendedbyMOLE.pdf) need to be raised by working class movement to
ensure some relief to toiling masses.
The above note stressed that unemployment situation has reached an
alarming height affecting the social fabric in a big way making a fertile
ground for all kinds of extremism, fundamentalism and divisive forces to make
their way. In such a situation, ignoring the task of fighting against
unemployment generating policy regime will be perilous for the democratic
system as a whole. The working class movement has to take on the responsibility
to mobilize all concerned to carry forward the struggle for 'Right to Work' for
all through phased programme of countrywide action towards reversal of the
employment regressive policy regime.
