India – Every year 12 million young Indians will arrive in the job market: where are the jobs ?

I am constantly surprised at how often in conversations with thoughtful people this statistic is brought up: that, from now on for the next decade, every year 12 million young Indians will arrive in the job market. And this additional statistic is brought up too: that in the past few years, the organised sector in India, the sector that provides regular salaries and a modicum of medical and retirement benefits, has added almost no jobs in spite of the economy having grown quite healthily during that period.

Ajit Balakrishnan

When the statistic about the surge of young people joining the workforce was first brought up, it was presented as a “demographic dividend”: young people joining the workforce would spend on housing, clothes and so on, thereby driving economic growth through their newly acquired shopping power. When the first signs of there being no jobs for all these people appeared, we turned a critical eye on our educational system: if these young people are not getting jobs, it must be because our schools, colleges, industrial training institutes and polytechnics must be doing a bad job. We thought that the answer lay in reforming curricula, motivating teachers and improving educational management.

It is only now that the seriousness of the situation is dawning on us: you can improve school, college and vocational education and make them the best in the world but if there is no demand-side action – that is, demand for these students when they graduate and at salaries that are reasonable – students will not opt for these courses.

Why is it that, for all the economic growth that India has seen in the last two decades, the only jobs that are available are in the “informal” sector – jobs such as those for drivers, maids, shop assistants, manual labourers, street vendors and garbage collectors?

via Ajit Balakrishnan: India’s national jobs hunt | Business Standard.