You have stated in your paper that North India struggles to cope with employment security, but this is applicable to entire India. I wrote an article in ‘Times education supplement in 1973 about employment situation in India. Even in 1973 for 40 vacancies there were more than 40 000 applicants and a few vacancies in nationalised banks there were so many applications that they had to be collected in van loads. The question of unemployment goes back from 1960s and still nothing is done. It is not surprising after two generation due to population growth, the situation is out of hand.
There are basic issues that are responsible for this disaster. India is over populated. There is no systemic of registering birth and we don’t know exact population in India since in villages they do not bother to register due to lack of co-ordination from various states and the population data is not correct nationally. Secondly there is no system of issuing National insurance cards at the age of 16 that will enable them to make sure that they are provided with jobs or unemployment benefit. There is no such thing exists in India. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi live on state handouts and they never worked in India officially.
I do not know how unemployment figures are calculated in India. In Britain everybody has to work with exception of disabled people and families with young children. On that basis unemployment figures include people who should be working and are economically inactive.
In India agricultural workers and other artisans are not taken into account to include unemployment figures. According to Western calculation there are more than 300 million who are economically inactive in India and otherwise they should be working. Unless there is a growth of 17 per cent India cannot solve solve poverty and unemployment.
Arun Vaidyanathan
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