Unemployment in India

A man has to perform many roles in his life, the most crucial of which is that of an earning member. It is crucial not because a man spends ap­proximately one-third of his lifetime performing this role but because it determines both his livelihood and status. It also enables an individual to support his family and fulfil his social obligations to society.
It makes possible for him to achieve power, too. If a person, with a capacity and potential to work, refuses to work or fails to obtain work, he not only does not gain any status in society but also comes to suffer from several emotional and social problems. His plight affects himself, his family, and the society too. No wonder, unemployment has been described as the most significant sociological problem in society.

Opportunity for employment then becomes imperative in all such cultures which claim to be democracies. Equal employment opportunity is a prerequisite for equal accessibility to achieved status. Attempts to deal with unemploy­ment have hitherto been two-pronged: one, to alleviate the status of the unemployed, and two, to abolish unemployment itself. After inde­pendence, though the governments—both central and state—have taken the problem into their hands, they have remained ineffective in tackling this problem and in providing assistance to persons unable to support themselves. Unemployment is still viewed as an economic rather than a social phenomenon.

What is unemployment? If a man with a PhD degree works as a petty clerk in an office, he will not be considered an unemployed person. At most, he would be viewed as an ‘underemployed’ person. An unem­ployed person is “one who having potentialities and willingness to earn, is unable to find a remunerative work”.

Sociologically, it has been de­fined as “forced or involuntary separation from remunerative work of a member of the normal working force (that is, of 15-59 age group) during normal working time at normal wages and under normal conditions”. D ‘Mello (1969:24) has defined it as “a condition in which an individual is not in a state of remunerative occupation despite his desire to do so”. Naba Gopal Das has explained unemployment as “condition of involun­tary idleness”.

The Planning Commission of India has described a person as ‘marginally unemployed’ when he/ she remains without work for six months in a year. Against this, the ILO considers that person as ’employed’ who remains with work for 15 hours (two days) in a week (of five days). This definition may be accepted in a developed country which provides social security to the unemployed but it cannot be ac­cepted in a developing country like India which has no Unemployment Insurance Scheme.

According to the Labour Ministry’s projec­tions, there were to be as many as 54 million people unemployed at the end of the Eighth Five Year Plan (The Hindustan Times, May 10, 1995). According to the Union Labour Minister, more than 9 million additional employment opportunities per year will have to be generated to eventu­ally meet the goal of reducing unemployment to ‘negligible levels’ by the year 2002, which is indeed a stupendous task (The Hindustan Times, November 17, 1994).

Present Features of Unemployment in India:

Some features of unemployment in India have been identified as follows:

(1) The incidence of unemployment is much higher in urban areas than in rural areas.

(2) Unemployment rates for women are higher than those for men.

(3) The incidence of unemployment among the educated is much higher (about 12%) than overall unemployment (of 3.8%).

(4) There is greater unemployment in agricultural sector than in industrial and other major sectors.

(5) The growth of employment per annum is only about 2 per cent.