ESSAY:UNEMPLOYMENT IN INDIA

UNEMPLOYMENT IN INDIA

A man has to perform many roles in his life, the most crucial of which is that of an earning member. It is crucial not because a man spends ap­proximately one-third of his lifetime performing this role but because it determines both his livelihood and status. It also enables an individual to support his family and fulfil his social obligations to society.

It makes possible for him to achieve power, too. If a person, with a capacity and potential to work, refuses to work or fails to obtain work, he not only does not gain any status in society but also comes to suffer from several emotional and social problems. His plight affects himself, his family, and the society too. No wonder, unemployment has been described as the most significant sociological problem in society.

Opportunity for employment then becomes imperative in all such cultures which claim to be democracies. Equal employment opportunity is a prerequisite for equal accessibility to achieved status. Attempts to deal with unemploy­ment have hitherto been two-pronged: one, to alleviate the status of the unemployed, and two, to abolish unemployment itself. After inde­pendence, though the governments—both central and state—have taken the problem into their hands, they have remained ineffective in tackling this problem and in providing assistance to persons unable to support themselves. Unemployment is still viewed as an economic rather than a social phenomenon.

What is unemployment? If a man with a PhD degree works as a petty clerk in an office, he will not be considered an unemployed person. At most, he would be viewed as an ‘underemployed’ person. An unem­ployed person is “one who having potentialities and willingness to earn, is unable to find a remunerative work”.

Sociologically, it has been de­fined as “forced or involuntary separation from remunerative work of a member of the normal working force (that is, of 15-59 age group) during normal working time at normal wages and under normal conditions”. D ‘Mello (1969:24) has defined it as “a condition in which an individual is not in a state of remunerative occupation despite his desire to do so”. Naba Gopal Das has explained unemployment as “condition of involun­tary idleness”.

The Planning Commission of India has described a person as ‘marginally unemployed’ when he/ she remains without work for six months in a year. Against this, the ILO considers that person as ’employed’ who remains with work for 15 hours (two days) in a week (of five days). This definition may be accepted in a developed country which provides social security to the unemployed but it cannot be ac­cepted in a developing country like India which has no Unemployment Insurance Scheme.

Unemployment has three elements:

(i) An individual should be capa­ble of working,

(ii) An individual should be willing to work, and

(iii) An individual must make an effort to find work.

On this basis, a person who is physically and/or mentally disabled, or who is chronically ill and un­able to work, or a Sadhu who because of his status as an in charge of a Math, considers it below dignity to work, or a beggar who does not want to work, cannot be included in the definition of unemployed persons.

A society is believed to be in a “condition of full employment” if the pe­riod of enforced idleness remains minimum.

A society with full employment has four characteristics:

(i) An individual takes very little time to find remunerative work according to his capabilities and qualifi­cations,

(ii) He is sure of finding remunerative work,

(iii) The number of vacant jobs in the society exceeds the number of job seekers, and

(iv) Work is available on ‘adequate remuneration’.

Magnitude:

Though it is often repeated that there has been an alarming rise in unem­ployment in our country since Independence, the exact number of unemployed persons is not yet known, as no survey has been undertaken either by the Planning Commission or by the National Sample Survey (NSS), or the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) or the Indian Statis­tical Institute (ISI). The figures given are based only on estimates.

The estimates only take into consideration the number of persons registered in the employment exchanges and these employment exchanges cover mainly the urban areas. Registration with the employment exchanges be­ing voluntary, not all the unemployed registers their names in the exchanges. Further, some of the registered persons are already employed but register again to seek better employment.

However, most of the so­cial scientists are of the opinion that quite a large proportion of the working population is not regularly employed in our country and that these unemployed and underemployed people and their families are de­pendent upon their family members or kin even for their bare necessities.

While the number of unemployed persons in the country registered in the employment exchanges in 1952 was 4.37 lakh, in 1967 it in­creased to 27.40 lakh, in 1971 to 50.99 lakh, in 1976 to 93.26 lakh (Surya, January 1979:50-51), in 1981 to 178 lakh, in 1983 to 220 lakh, in 1985 to 263 lakh, in 1987 to 301 lakh, in 1990 to 334 lakh (India Today, May 31,1991:117), in 1993 to 362 lakh and in 1995 to 381 lakh (The Hindustan Times, March 19, 1997).

Using 1952 as an index of 100, the following unemployment index points out how unemployment has increased markedly in India after In­dependence.

Unemployment index (1952=100)

Year	Index	Year	Index	Year	Index
1952	100	1980	3,707	1986	6,641
1967	627	1981	4,073	1990	7,643
1969	783	1982	4,520
1971	1,167	1983	5,034	1993	8,283
1976	2,134	1985	6,018	1995	8,718

Thus, while between 1952 and 1971 or in a period of about 19 years, the number of registered unemployed persons in the country had in­creased 11.7 times, between 1971 and 1995, the number increased 7.5 times. If we take the population of the country in 1995 to be 930 million, we can say that about 4.1 per cent of the total people are unemployed in our country.

But this will be a wrong assessment because the numbers of people who are expected to be capable of working belong to the age group of 15-59 years. Since 498 million of the total population of 844 million in 1991 belonged to this (15-59) age group, assuming that same proportion of people (59%) belonged to this age group in 1995, we could claim that 6.8 per cent of the working people (37.2 million out of 548.7 million) are unemployed in India.

According to the statement given by the Minister of State for Planning in Parliament in March 1996, the num­ber of unemployed people in the country up to August 1995 was estimated to be around 37.2 million (The Hindustan Times, March 19, 1996). This is not highly alarming and unnerving in comparison to many countries. In France, unemployment rate is 12 per cent of the labour force, in Ireland 16.9 per cent, in Spain 23 per cent, in East Germany 8.1 per cent, in West Germany 15.4 per cent, in Belgium 9.7 per cent, and in industrially advanced countries, it stands at 8.1 per cent (The Hindustan Times, March 24, 1994).

According to the Labour Ministry’s projec­tions, there were to be as many as 54 million people unemployed at the end of the Eighth Five Year Plan (The Hindustan Times, May 10, 1995). According to the Union Labour Minister, more than 9 million additional employment opportunities per year will have to be generated to eventu­ally meet the goal of reducing unemployment to ‘negligible levels’ by the year 2002, which is indeed a stupendous task (The Hindustan Times, November 17, 1994).

In May 1990, the highest number of persons registered in employ­ment exchanges was in the state of West Bengal (4.63 million), followed by Bihar (3.16 million), Kerala (3.13 million), Uttar Pradesh (3.10 mil­lion), Tamil Nadu (3.05 million), Maharashtra (2.99 million), Andhra Pradesh (2.83 million), Madhya Pradesh (2.03 million), Karnataka (1.25 million), Assam (0.99 million), Gujarat (0.94 million), Rajasthan (0.93 million), Orissa (0.86 million), Delhi (0.80 million), Punjab (0.63 mil­lion), Chandigarh (0.20 million), Tripura (0.15 million), Jammu and Kashmir (0.11 million), Mizoram (0.08 million), Nagaland (0.04 mil­lion), and Meghalaya (0.02 million) (Rajasthan Patrika, October 15, 1990). In other words, more than half (51.1%) of the total unemployed persons live in three states of northern India (West Bengal, Bihar and Ut­tar Pradesh) and two states of southern India (Kerala and Tamil Nadu).

Present Features of Unemployment in India:

Some features of unemployment in India have been identified as fol­lows:

(1) The incidence of unemployment is much higher in urban areas than in rural areas.

(2) Unemployment rates for women are higher than those for men.

(3) The incidence of unemployment among the educated is much higher (about 12%) than overall unemployment (of 3.8%).

(4) There is greater unemployment in agricultural sector than in industrial and other major sectors.

(5) The growth of employment per annum is only about 2 per cent.