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10/7/2011
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Dependent Var: Log (Value Added) of Sector Agriculture Manufacturing Wholesale Trade, Retail Trade, Transport, Public Administration & Defense Education, Health, Hotels, Other Services Finance, Communication, Business Services
Range: Log Employment (Hours) Low Skilled High Skilled -0.57 0.22 -0.25 0.43 -0.23 0.53 -0.52 -0.52 0.48 0.61
Table 1: Global Employment Elasticity Modern service sectors (gray shaded) score substantially higher
[Source: The Service Sector as India's Road to Economic Growth, Barry Eichengreen and Poonam Gupta, February 2011]
A mature stage of growth must also indicate that job creation could follow global trends as well. Another reality, India chooses to ignore, is that the services sector is immensely capable of creating far more jobs compared with other sectors; albeit, jobs that require high skilled people. India, even with its recent skill development initiatives, is busy filling low skilled and low paying jobs that extend right beyond the doors of the unorganized sector. There is a failure to both visualize and
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actualize an enormous employment prospect. This, actually, is at the root of the problem of transforming the large and growing demographic potential into dividend. Bridging the divide The first step to address this issue would require Indias planning and policy institutions to recognize a shift in the labor demand paradigm. The immediate burning issue is to put the nearly 50 million unemployed people to work. In the medium term, however, there is a dire need to stop looking in the rear view mirror and formulate policies based on current and forecasted labor demand. Given the 58%, and growing, share of services in GDP, solving for the large deficit of graduate and post-graduate level, employable talent is an imperative. Filling a substantial proportion of the additional 270 million working age population in the services sector would have a multiplier effect: increased marginal growth in GDP, thanks to significantly higher incomes and improved tax revenue, thanks to growth in the organized sector. Add to this, broader demographic and societal benefits of improved literacy and reduced poverty, and we would have holistic and qualitative transformation. Three key steps policy makers need to take to effectively capture and capitalize on tomorrows labor demand prospects Identify and include greenfield and newage subsectors with promising medium to long term prospects in the industrial framework Set up a mechanism to map current and future demand at industry subsector level, working closely and continually with subsector stakeholders Share demand intelligence with private training and vocational institutions and set up career counseling cells to prepare the supply side for new opportunities
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better suits the demand dynamic requires us to overhaul an archaic HRD regime and therefore restructure a vexed education-vocation set up. Immediate and medium term action The immediate term focus needs to be on policies that positively reinforce the countrys impaired skill development infrastructure. We need to dramatically improve the throughput of trained manpower train 10 times the just-over-a-million people being trained currently. This demands quadrupling vocational training capacities from the present 3.1million to 12.8 million. The imperative is a shift of focus from the formal public training system to increased private participation. The Government has, indeed, taken several laudable steps towards skill development over the past 5 years but its stranglehold over policy implementation, given the numerous limitations of the present state of governance, leaves many a question unanswered. The medium-to-longer term focus must be a two-pronged strategy to restructure education greater access and greater quality. While capacities are being created in education, they are only aggravating the problems of access especially to the underprivileged and quality. Opening up the sector to substantial participation by industry and foreign institutions should imbue it with superior academic standards that help leapfrog employability. This model must accommodate subsidized education to the poor and deserving to ensure equity. This step to restructure education gestates over a longer period of time but holds the promise to deliver us to dividend. A few critical interventions are required at the state level to make the above transformation a reality Augment public-private partnerships in vocational education with industry linkages right at the policy level, and down to the curricula and outcome stages, to include inputs of the demand dynamic throughout the vocational education lifecycle. Implement a performance ranking system for vocational institutions to arm candidates with information to make the right choices. Vesting candidates with the funding option through appropriate vouchering and other mechanisms also links funding to outcomes. Link accreditation of higher educational institutions to their capability to contribute to incremental employability. This, in turn, puts lower limits on quality of pedagogy and infrastructure, and forces an eventual consolidation in the sector.
Persistent growth in casual employment, and a constantly, relatively smaller share organized employment, reminds us that we continue to live under the threat of a systemic failure to capture demographic potential. For an inherent lack of demand-supply equilibrium to be addressed, the complex labyrinth made of the three structural mismatches needs to be straightened out. The Sectoral mismatch, a demand-side issue discussed above, is yet to be effectively addressed. The Education-and-Skills mismatch is a huge supply-side issue discussed above. The recent skill development initiatives, stressing on vocational education, would partly address this issue. The Geographic mismatch, also inadequately addressed so far, is discussed in a later section of heterogeneity and needs strong rural-to-urban transitional interventions
While individualized interventions such as skill development are much needed to tackle each of the mismatch areas, they risk the possibility of being isolated, part-solutions to a bigger problem. The root cause of labor market heartburn is regulatory cholesterol. Arriving at an effective solution to labor market woes needs not just medicinal dosages, but a set of new eyes as well. In other words, a holistic, interconnected, vision of 3Es Education, Employment and Employability is to be cultivated from which all regime reform is conceived. This is not difficult. Like most attitudinal changes, this one requires a tangible, measurable goal and reducing transactional costs of labor markets is it. Archaic, arbitrary and dysfunctional laws, as well as over-legislation, are the drivers of this cost. Key steps to be taken in this regard are The very roles of government and its departments in formulating, and executing on, the regime needs to be rethought to reduce multiplicity and encourage individual state government implementation. Labor laws need to be freed from their present convoluted form; the complex nomenclature needs to be simplified and where required de-duplicated and unified. In order that unorganized employment is not incentivized laws that constitute distractive and wasteful expenditure for employers (EFPO and ESI are examples) need to be repealed.
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