The employment growth in India, over the last few years, came down significantly as the fresh data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed that unemployment rate in the month of October jumped to 8.5 per cent, which is the highest in over three years.

A new academic research paper released by the Centre of Sustainable Employment also concluded that there has been a significant decline in total employment in India between 2011-12 and 2017-18, reported English daily. The research paper by Santosh Mehrotra and Jaiati K Parida stated as, “However, due to sharp increases in enrollment at every level of education over the noughties, it was expected that post -2012 total employment would increase, particularly in the non-farm sectors. This would have sustained the structural transformation process which began after 2004-05. But unfortunately, total employment during 2011-12 and 2017-18 declined by 9 million. The research further states that this happened for the first time in India’s history.

It is really ironical noting that Coimbatore Municipal Corporation posted a vacancy for 549 sanitary workers. What followed was that 7000 highly qualified applicants even some of them with engineering and graduate degrees applied for the job. The corporation witnessed the overwhelming turnout of 7000 candidates.

Similarly, few months back, Chennai witnessed an unusual event when around 4600 of youth sent their application for 14 posts like sweepers and sanitary workers. The applicants had professional qualification like B.Tech, M.Tech, Master of Business Administration. These are evident indications which show how drastically the country is suffering from job crisis.

Though the government constantly has been refuting the grim of job data but the facts and figures can’t be avoided any more. Therefore, now the government should take an initiative to overcome the high prevalence of unemployment and figure out the derivers of the job crisis. In this regard, it is worth to mention a book titled ‘Job crisis in India’ written by business journalist Raghavan Jagnnathan. The author in his book pointed out factors and reasons behind this decline of employment. He attributed that the absence of skills required in the highly technical nature of jobs is a big factor. Another aspect of this is that in the majority of cases the skills or training acquired by the youths do not match or suit the core demand of the job. So at first the government must step up for reformation, innovation and renovation of the standard of the education in universities and colleges.

The National Employability Report 2019, reveals, “The employability of Indian engineers continues to be painfully low with more than 80 per cent engineers unemployable for any job in the knowledge economy”. The report further said that past nine years made no changes on aggregate level and Indian education system needs systemic long term changes in higher education. The report looks quantitatively into the reasons for low employability and makes detailed recommendations for change.

It shows that majority of engineering graduates do not have enough skills to compete in the knowledge market. Then what about Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) which was launched in July 2015 and Rs 1,500 crore had been allocated with an endearing aim to equip youngsters with handful of skills. Again in 2016 a renovated version of PMKVY was launched aiming at providing training to 10 million youngsters and Rs 12,000 crore had been allocated but the results are yet to be seen. The government must find out a proper solution for this crisis before the situation gets more worsened.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)