Unemployment and Data Matrix in India
India’s unemployment rate currently sits at 9%. Yet, one in
three citizens with at least a bachelor’s degree is out of work. Its working
age population is projected to rise from over 750 million today to almost a
billion by 2020. At the same time, agricultural employment is in decline,
accounting for less than 50% of total employment for the first time in India
history. In my life span of 36 years, I have seen a mass movement from rural to
urban areas to get job and to live a decent life style. All this population is
nothing but the farmers (or their children) who left agricultural job and
migrated to urban areas.
Our Indian government has no precise data as such which can
direct the policy makers to create some feasible plan / policies to address the
unemployment issue in the country. The government has no precise data which can
give a glance of rural / urban population unemployment rate along with age
group and gender. I have seen the great Indian politicians giving baseless
statements on unemployment and daily wages of the labors during the election
rallies. The rise and rise of child labors in India is because of these
factors.
Fifteen years ago in Germany, a push from researchers and
the strong will of the administration led to the creation of a unique database
on individual workers. After that, German government made effective policies
and rules to fight with the unemployment issue and they did it well.
India does not have to start from scratch in creating a
similar data set. In fact, most of the raw data needed are already collected.
Many industries have to report employee wages to comply with Employee Provident
Fund. Individuals are required to report income in their tax returns. Almost
all benefit programs in India collect and maintain their own data. The only
thing remaining is to link and clean the data originating from different
sources.
This kind of data will definitely help to create feasible
labor laws in the country. Better data leads to more efficient investment by
the government as well as outside agencies. Most importantly, the costliest
part of this endeavor, collecting the raw data, is already being done. Creating,
maintaining and allowing access to administrative data will encourage high
quality research on the Indian Labor market. The benefits to policy makers and
the Indian public are clear. I hope the current government in India (Modi
Government) will take care of this and help Indians to live a decent and
prosperous life.
- Sanat
