Youth of India in Budget 2018 and Future of this Vibrant Section

Harasankar Adhikari

Mr. Ramanath Kovind, the hon’ble President of India in his Republic Day’s address to the Nation reminded us about roles and expectation from youth of India. Youth of India is driving force for making a New India. But this vibrant section is deceived of different interest groups.  His address significantly identified this section for rectification of their behavior.   About more than half of the population of India is within the age of 35 years. They are the symbol of progressive India. Youth is variously involved in violence from schools to Universities, para/local to state and regional to national. Their intolerance behavior is prime concerned of senior of the nation. But senior policy-makers, political leaders and others know the broad and particular reason for this intolerance. They are misguided and there is no role model to them. Corruption, mischievousness and default policies are making them arrogant towards government, and they lost their faith on democracy gradually day-to-day. Particularly, youth of India is in crisis because of unemployment.  Joblessness is main cause of anxiety, depression and agony. They are being lured by political parties and different antagonist and protagonist groups.  

Union Budget, 2018 has no definite policy for youth employment. Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister was promised in 2014 to create 10 million jobs. While after almost 4 years of his rule, only 823000 jobs had been created according to the International Labour Organisation. ILO classified it as vulnerable employment.  ILO also altered that ‘over 1.3 million jobs needs to be created per month for the next 15 years to protect this vibrant section of India. But it is a nightmare and we are far aways from this target.

This year, budget was very important and significant because before the general election, 2019 it is further false promise to this section. Announce of the National Employment Policy, and its function is basically to design job prospect in vulnerable/informal sector. This government has no any promise to create jobs in public sector because this government believes on privatization of public sectors, public undertakings and others. Even this government is gradually privatizing Indian Railways, the biggest sector of the country. We see that now railways booking counters are run by private agencies(franchises) where we have to purchase ticket for minimum one rupee extra. Focus on skill development for educated unemployed youth in this budget is a policy to disable the youth of the country. Because a survey reflected that last year only 10% of trainees, out of about 5 million trainees under this scheme of National Skill Development Corporation have got jobs in various informal sector. The trades of this skill development have no scope even in local area. Further when a youth is graduate or post graduate why he or she would go for training on mobile repairing, computer application, tailoring, beautician, etc. Government and its policy for youth employment are making apprentices.

Our prime minister is the talker, but not a doer because in his Independence Day speech Modi had said "We are nurturing our youngsters to be job creators and not job-seekers."  The ground reality is ‘if the small and medium enterprises and micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs and MSMEs) are incentivised to successfully create more jobs.’  Another focus of this budget is changes in labour laws. The employment patterns of last year reflect that ‘maximum employment is in low wage employment intensive sector.’  A report tells that   “84% of jobs in firms employing 50 or fewer people, 10.5% employ 200+ employees. Only 5.5% is in the all-important middle. This missing middle has to grow if incomes are to grow along with productivity. India needs changes in labour laws, help in finance and infrastructure,"   On the other hand, IT firms, such as Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Cognizant, Reliance Groups made huge job cuts, plenty of jobs are also being lost in telecom as it goes through a phase of consolidation.

It is very much surprised that whole country depends on only service sectors. There is no meaningful effort for rejuvenation and expansion of production sectors. Anyway, what would be the future of our most energetic vibrant section?  Our nation promotes privatization of education from Nursery to University. Parents usually invest a bulk to purchase degrees for their offspring. But job placard is no vacancy. Therefore, it is obvious that this section would be intolerated and would be involved in intoxication and other indulgences for non-fulfillment of expectation. They would be against this democracy and their leaders. The political leaders of democratic business might be cautious and conscious any day they would be attacked by this section. They would be questioned by this section in near future.

Frontier
Feb 18, 2017