By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, April 25, 2022: A Jesuit social scientist blames political leaders after a report showed most of India’s 900 million workforce has stopped looking for jobs.
“I am not shocked but immensely sad and ashamed of my leaders who keep promising jobs at every election but never keep the promises,” bemoans Father Irudhaya Jothi, a grassroots activist for two decades in east and northeastern India.
The 54-year-old priest was reacting to new data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Private, a Mumbai-based research firm, that noted India’s job creation problem is morphing into a greater threat.
Frustrated at not being able to find the right kind of job, millions of Indians, particularly women, are exiting the labor force entirely, the report says.
Father Jothi says the government has no more works for the young and “the corporates who own most labor incentive sectors are mechanizing for their profit in the name of efficiency and outputs.”
“The concept of work — karma is dharma or work is religion — has no value in India where the culture has defined jobs according to one’s caste,” he told Matters India on April 25.
“The frustrated workforce still hopes for bright future and keeps voting for the government that keeps betraying them,” the Jesuit laments.
“The truth will set you free, but the work force is confused and wondering, what is truth,” he added.
According to ndtv.com, the overall labor participation rate dropped from 46 percent to 40 percent between 2017 and 2022. Among women, about 21 million disappeared from the workforce, leaving only 9 percent of the eligible population employed or looking for positions.
Now, more than half the 900 million Indians of legal working age — roughly the population of the US and Russia combined — don’t want a job, according to the CMIE.
The latest numbers are an ominous harbinger when India, one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies, bets on young workers to drive growth, the report says.
“The large share of discouraged workers suggests that India is unlikely to reap the dividend that its young population has to offer,” the report quoted Kunal Kundu, a Bengaluru-based economist, as saying.
India’s challenges around job creation are well-documented. With about two-thirds of the population between the ages of 15 and 64, competition for anything beyond menial labor is fierce. Stable positions in the government routinely draw millions of applications and entrance to top engineering schools is practically a crapshoot, according to the report.
To keep pace with a youth bulge, India needs to create at least 90 million new non-farm jobs by 2030, according to a 2020 report by McKinsey Global Institute. That would require an annual GDP growth of 8 percent to 8.5 percent.
Although India has made great steps in liberalizing its economy, its dependency ratio will start rising soon, warns the report. Indians may become older, but not richer, it adds.
A decline in labor predates the pandemic. In 2016, after the government banned most currency notes in an attempt to stamp out black money, the economy sputtered. The roll-out of a nationwide sales tax around the same time posed another challenge. India has struggled to adapt to the transition from an informal to formal economy.
Explanations for the drop in workforce participation vary. Unemployed Indians are often students or homemakers. Many of them survive on rental income, the pensions of elderly household members or government transfers. In a world of rapid technological change, others are simply falling behind in having marketable skill-sets.
For women, the reasons sometimes relate to safety or time-consuming responsibilities at home. Though they represent 49 percent of India’s population, women contribute only 18 percent of its economic output, about half the global average.
The government has tried to address the problem, including announcing plans to raise the minimum marriage age for women to 21 years. That could improve workforce participation by freeing women to pursue higher education and a career, according to a recent report from the State Bank of India.
What has the church in India done to improve the life of the poor and unemployed except paying lip service and shedding crocodile tears?
For a while, let the church forget about social work, building schools and saving souls and start reading the bible from a common man’s point of view.
Catholic church views the Old Testament as outdated and irrelevant, whereas it deals with human enslavement, poverty and downward debt spirals, which are hardly problems of a by-gone era.
Let the so called missionaries and priests read chapter 25 of Leviticus and preach the Jubilee Land Laws as also usury and other laws given by Moses.
The church in India has totally ignored the call given by Pope Francis for a Universal Basic Income for all which shows their lack of concern for the poor and unemployed.
It is not only a Jesuit but also every “good, responsible and sensible citizen” in India calls the increasing unemployment rate, child deaths due to malnourishment, unending rapes of women, growing atrocities on minorities, pathetic condition of the senior citizens, corruption at every level, increasing communal violence, swindling of national wealth by some selected corporates and hindutva-driven politicians etc.the BIGGEST SHAME.
Who will redeem the country from the SHAME?