NEW DELHI (PTI): As the un employment problem gets grimmer with each passing day despite all the economic restructuring, Indian government’s plan to achieve near total employment by creating 8,5 million jobs annually for the next 10 years, appears a distant dream.

Another worrying feature of the bleak employment scenario is the increase in the number of educated unemployed,

Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR) estimates say that out of nearly 41 million people joining the labor market during the eighth plan period, 16 million will be educated,

If the expected backlog is taken into account, during 199297, 22 million educated and 33.79 million uneducated would be on lookout for jobs, the estimates say.

While the uneducated have cause to cheer as more jobs are expected to be created for them than the requirement, only 13, 38 million educated unemployed, nearly 60% of the needy, will find openings.

Studies indicate that educated people are largely employed in the organized sector, and this sector has stagnated at 10 to 12% level in the past 40 years, there might be a decline in employment Opportunities for them.

While the impact of liberalization on employment is not yet visible in terms of large scale employment shrinkage, trade unions fee] that the pains of the proposed “exit policy” are already beginning to be felt.

In Gujarat, the anticipated healthy growth in employment during the eighth and ninth plan periods is likely to take care of new entrants and migrant workers. However, marginal workers would be a serious concern as their numbers have been growing for the last two decades and are expected to touch 33.30 lakh from the existing 28.41 lakh by 1997.

While various programs during the 80’s were able to alleviate the lot of the poor and his decade turned out to be the best in terms of growth, it was the worst decade in respect of employment generation, Dr.Ghose says, underlying the necessity for the inclusion of an employment policy in the economic restructuring package.

Article extracted from this publication >>July 2, 1993