Although obfuscated by more populist issues such as the drift into electoral autocracy, diminution of minority rights and threat to pluralism and secularism from assertive Hindutva majoritarianism, rising youth unemployment is likely to prove a key issue in General Election 2024, the outcome of which will be declared on June 4. Unemployment data available in the public domain is dismaying because the major share of the anguish of joblessness is being borne by ‘educated’ youth.
The official NSSO and private think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) are agreed that in January this year, the percentage of unemployed youth-adults in the above 15 years age group is 6.8 percent, down from 8.3 percent a year ago. Yet it’s alarming that within the age group 20-24, unemployment increased to 44.49 percent in October-December 2023 from 43.65 percent in the July-September quarter. Likewise unemployment among adults aged 25-29 increased to 14.33 percent in the Oct-Dec quarter of 2023 from 13.35 percent in the previous quarter. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that the percentage of ‘registered unemployed’ has remained constant at over 40 percent since your editor co-promoted Business India, the country’s pioneer business news magazine, in 1978. The fact that almost one-third of post-independence India’s working-age population — assuming that 10-15 percent of registered unemployed obtained gainful employment after registration — has remained without jobs for over 75 years, indicates severe fault-lines in the national development model.
This is not because there is a jobs shortage within the economy which is growing at 6-7 percent per year. The plain truth is that India’s unemployment and under-employment blight is the outcome of a sub-standard education system. Despite the Kothari Commission having recommended an annual outlay of 6 percent of GDP for public education way back in 1967, education expenditure (Centre plus states) has averaged 3.5 percent per year for the past 75 years. As a result learning outcomes of children in government schools which teach 52 percent of India’s 260 million in-school children, are rock-bottom with over half of class VII students unable to read class III textbooks or solve simple sums. Moreover in the brahmanical education system, skills education has been almost totally neglected while the public higher education system has been ruined by political interference and over-regulation.
Yet the country’s establishment and indeed the post-independence generation, is reluctant to make the connection between sub-standard education, neglect of skilling and unemployment. A weak-minded electorate is easily distracted by caste, community and creed issues.
Therefore, the auguries are that the incumbent BJP government at the Centre is unlikely to pay a price for its continuous neglect of education and under-development of India’s huge and high-potential human resource.
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