Josephine Tigga, a 25-year-old Calcutta girl, is apprehensive while sharing her disappointment and anger, as she sits at home unemployed with her post-graduation degree. She says, “I have completed my Master's in Hospital Management and I’m searching for a job for the past many months in the Quality Department of Hospitals but no vacancy in Kolkata/West Bengal.” She bemoans the possibility of any govt jobs saying, “The Government hospitals need bribe or references from influential people.” 

She is one of the 900 million Indian workforce disappointed and frustrated while looking for jobs. With an average age of 29, India has one of the youngest populations globally. 

India is home to a fifth of the world’s youth population. These young people are expected to drive a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship and diversity. They are expected to play a critical role in achieving the nation’s ambitious target of becoming a USD 5 Trillion economy. 

According to the United Nations Population Fund report, although India’s fertility rate has declined from about 3.6 to 2.4 children in the last three decades, India is projected to become the world’s most populous nation by 2028, with a population of some 1.45 billion. 

With the vast resource of young citizens, India could create a ‘demographic evident’; it means, a shift in a population’s age structure, mainly when the working age population is larger than the number of dependents. It is an asset. 

India has seen a significant improvement in health and education but wide inequalities persist. Maternal mortality and gender discrimination remain high. Early marriage and pregnancy contribute to excessive maternal death among women under 24. 

India tops the global list of the largest youth populations in the world with 356 million which is bigger than the United States of America’s total population of 332 million. 

Ministry of Labour and Employment (MLE) traditionally compiles and disseminates data on unemployment in India from the National Sample survey Office (NSSO) once in ten years. 

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) is a privately owned and professionally managed company headquartered in Mumbai and monthly publishes the unemployment statistics in India in detail. 

As per the CMIE report, millions of Indians particularly women are exiting the labour force entirely frustrated at not being able to find the right kind of jobs. 

As we remember workers globally, it is worth pondering the situation of work and unemployment in India.

Some suggest large population, lack of vocational skills, low educational levels of working populations and labour-intensive sectors suffering from the slowdown in private investment, particularly after demonetisation and lockdowns due to covid 19 as the cause of unemployment in India. 

Unemployment is a situation when a person actively searches for a job and is unable to find work. Unemployment indicates the health of the economy of a country. 

On my way back from Bolpur to Howrah in West Bengal by train on a winter afternoon, I witnessed this fascinating incident of asserting one’s right to work on the train. 

The Tea vendor who goes by the title ‘Chaa wala’ shouted at the newspaper vendor, saying ‘you sell newspaper worth two rupees and these men settle down reading till their destination, the tea vendors are the losers’; so, he forced the paperwala to get down from that compartment, but shortly a visually-challenged beggar entered the scene and he was shouted too. But the beggar retorted saying, ‘just as you work, I too am working and leave me in peace’. Some commuters pacified them. Begging was a work for him!

I was reminded of this incident when I watched the maiden speech of the Union Home Minister in Parliament. Retorting to Mr Chidambaram, he said: “I think it is better to be a labourer or sell pakodas than unemployed”. There were many responses to such suggestions asking the Minister to try it at home for his children. 

The corporates and business houses profit greatly exploiting the workers of their firms or industries. A tea garden labourer in Unokoti district’s Luxmi Tea Gardens plucks a minimum of 20 kg fresh leaves per day for a meagre wage of Rs. 145 is an example of such exploitation. 

After processing 20 kg of fresh leaves, the company gets a minimum of five kg of ready tea leaves to be sold. One kg of the same tea is sold for Rs. 2,200 on amazon. The labourer plucks worth Rs. 11,000 per day and she is paid only Rs. 145 for eight hours of hard work. Of course, the company has to incur other expenses for making the final product. 

The tea garden workers in this part of the world had been brought from Chotanagpur areas more than a century ago to clean the forest and plant tea gardens; since then, they are settled and worked as Tea Garden workers and labourers. Even today they live in the Tea gardens’ property without any land of their own. This is nothing but a shameful practice of ‘bonded labour’ of tea garden workers! 

One Nation, one language, one religion, one ration, one education system and one rule conveniently brush aside one wage policy and one housing policy, etc! This is a dichotomy of our time. 

The economic policy of the Bhartiya Janata Party gives importance to two contradictory philosophies. ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, ‘Make in India’, ‘Skill India’, the Mudra loans, informal economy, decentralisation of village economics and even ‘Swachh Bharat’. 

On the other hand, reforms in labour & bankruptcy laws, boosting FDI through local partnership (an amalgamation of the two paradigms), disinvestment, the GST and reformed welfare-ism. 

The govt is on a selling-spree and a few global players are ruling the roost today. Policies are bent to promote the growth targets suggested by the corporates while many would have to sacrifice their land and resources for the sake of the nation! 

Any individual or group that aligns with the people on the periphery, and thinks, writes and organises on their behalf are branded Jhola wala, urban Naxals and anti-nationals. 

At another level, the gullible rural and urban poor youth, basically the ‘generation Z’, who are engaged in the virtual world of pizza and burgers, find nothing much to eat when they reach the kitchen in their own homes. Much more challenges are expected with generation Alpha in the coming years. The govt. cannot wash its hands off the responsibility of creating jobs for the citizens. 

The corporates have their agenda manifested clearly for a huge profit and they would mechanise everything using modern science to produce more in a shorter time. They don’t need the massive labour force; besides, they are not skilled to manage these machines.

The best way to keep the unemployed youth engaged is to tame them with religious sentiments and create issues such as cow vigilantism, hijab row, love jihad, halal meat ban, Ram Navami, Hanuman Jayanti and the likes. 

People like Tigga will continue to haunt the govt with the question, ‘I am qualified and ready to build the nation, but where is my job?’