How to Create More Employment
💼 How to Create More Employment
🧭 Strategy Mix
- 🌾 Improving Agriculture Sector: Public investment/loans for wells and irrigation; build dams/canals → absorbs underemployment within agriculture.
- 🏦 Cheap Credit Facilities: Shift farmers from informal lenders to bank credit at lower rates.
- 🛣️ Provision of Basic Facilities: Invest in roads, transport, banking, markets → multiplies local jobs.
- 🏭 Promotion of Local Industries: Support cottage & small-scale industries in semi-rural areas.
- 🎓🩺 Improve Education & Health: Create teaching/health jobs (e.g., ~20 lakh in education alone); need more doctors, nurses, health workers in rural areas.
- 🧳🧵💻 Develop New Services: Tourism, regional crafts, IT—requires planning & government support.
🛡️ MGNREGA (2005) — Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
Aims to enhance livelihood security in rural households by guaranteeing 100 days of wage employment per financial year.
- 📅 100 days of guaranteed employment every year.
- 💸 Unemployment allowance if work isn’t provided.
- ⚖️ Application of the “right to work” ethic; equal wage–equal work.
- 🎯 Focus on SC/ST and poor women; at least one-third beneficiaries are women.
🏢 Working Conditions: Organised vs Unorganised Sector
1) 🗂️ Organised Sector
Definition: Enterprises/places of work with regular employment terms, registered with government, and compliant with labour laws (e.g., Factories Act, Minimum Wages Act, Payment of Gratuity Act, Shops & Establishments).
✅ Advantages
- 🛡️ Job security
- ⏱️ Fixed working hours; overtime paid if extra hours
- 🏖️ Benefits: paid leave/holidays, PF, etc.
- 👵 Pension after retirement (as applicable)
2) 🧰 Unorganised Sector
Definition: Not registered by the government; small, scattered units, largely outside direct regulation.
⚠️ Disadvantages
- 💰 Very low wages
- 🚫 No overtime, paid leave, sick leave, or holidays
- ❌ High job insecurity; can be removed without reason
- 👥 Many casual/landless workers; high risk of exploitation
🧑🏭 Protecting Workers in the Unorganised Sector
🔎 Why Protection is Needed
- 💸 Wages: Incomes are unstable/insufficient → ensure fair, fixed wages.
- 🛡️ Job Security: Work ends with the project (e.g., construction) → need continuity safeguards.
- 🩺 Health & Safety: No medical/security cover; accidents aren’t employer’s responsibility → need protections.
🛠️ Measures to Protect
- 🌱 Alternative Employment Sources: Create opportunities beyond agriculture (MSMEs, services).
- 🏗️ Public Works Programmes: Year-round rural works, not just sowing/harvest seasons.
- 🧾 Social Security: Expand coverage (insurance, pensions, maternity benefits) to unorganised workers.
🏛️ Ownership: Private vs Public Sector
1) 🏷️ Private Sector
Owned/managed by individuals or groups; profit motive.
Examples: Hindustan Unilever, Tata Iron & Steel, Bajaj Auto.
2) 🏟️ Public Sector
Owned/managed by government; motive: social welfare & basic needs.
Examples: Indian Railways, BHEL, Sindri Fertiliser.
🎯 Role of the Public Sector
- 🛣️ Infrastructure: Transport, power, communication, basic industries (social overheads)
- 🗺️ Develop Backward Areas: Set up industries where private sector won’t
- 🏫 Basic Facilities: Schools, health services—state responsibility
- 🚰 Social Problems: Address malnutrition, high IMR, unsafe water, etc.
📈 Contribution of Public Sector to Economic Development
- 💵 Reasonable Cost: Provides essentials affordably where private sector may not
- 🏗️ Heavy Industries: Capital-intensive projects beyond private capacity
- 🫶 People’s Benefit First: Welfare over profit
- 🥖 Support to Poor: Subsidised essentials (e.g., wheat, kerosene)
- 🎓🩺 Education & Health: Free/nominal services for all
🧾 Key Terms (Glossary)
- 🏭 Economic Activities: Production/sale of goods & services (e.g., banking, farming, production).
- 🗂️ Sectors: Grouping of economic activities by a criterion to analyse better.
- 🌾 Primary Sector: Agriculture/nature-based activities; provides raw materials (e.g., agriculture, poultry).
- 🏭 Secondary Sector: Manufacturing; processes primary inputs (e.g., cloth from cotton, sugar from cane).
- 🛎️ Tertiary Sector: Services that aid production/distribution (e.g., banking, insurance, IT).
- ⚙️ Intermediate Goods: Used up in producing final goods; excluded from GDP (e.g., flour, cotton).
- ✅ Final Goods: For final consumption or capital formation; included in GDP (e.g., bread, TV).
- 🔁 Double Counting: Counting a product’s value more than once—happens if intermediates are added into GDP.
- 📊 Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Market value of final goods & services produced within domestic territory in a year.
- 👔 Employment: Having paid work; contributes to GDP.
- 🚫 Unemployment: Actively seeking work but unable to find a job; no GDP contribution.
- 🫥 Disguised Unemployment: More people employed than needed; workers under-utilised.
- 🏟️ Public Sector: Government-owned/managed; motive: social welfare.
- 🏷️ Private Sector: Individual/group-owned; motive: profit.
- 🗂️ Organised Sector: Registered, regulated; regular employment terms and benefits.
- 🧰 Unorganised Sector: Not registered; small, scattered units outside tight regulation.
- 🛡️ MGNREGA (2005): Guarantees 100 days of rural wage employment per household per year (also called NREGA/MNREGA).