It looks like through a strange twist of economic development it is the developed countries that are facing an employment crisis — loss of jobs due to the latest recession and not able to employ their own because of the logic of outsourcing — and India, which was quite famous for its ‘educated unemployed’ seems to be spared the pain. Or is it?
While the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents the mostly rich and industralised countries has come out with the assessment that job recoveries are going to be long and painful, and that 17 million jobs have been lost in the latest crisis, there is not much talk of job losses or about the rate of unemployment in the country.
There is still some debate about the number of poor people, but there is none at all about unemployment. It does not mean that it is not there are at all. It is just the case that no one is looking at the issue anymore. With an expanding economy, it seems that there is a job for everyone. But this hides a fact. India is always faced with the imbalance between the number of jobs available and the number of people seeking them. There are always more people than there are jobs.
Talking about unemployment or even job losses is considered bad manners in polite society where everyone is supposed to sing hosannas for the economic growth story. So, when infotech major Infosys announces that it is re-inducting former employees it is seen as a sign of return of growth in the sector, and no questions are asked as to how many people the company had laid off when the going was tough.
Despite groaning that Indian labour laws are inflexible, there have been enough job layoffs as well as losses in the last two years. It would have been interesting to know whether after the government’s stimulus package, some of those jobs have been regained.
Perhaps it is time for the economic experts, especially from the Planning Commission, to put out employment statistics like the OECD has done or the United States’ labour department does regularly. Indians should be confident and mature enough now to see the warts of a liberalised economy along with its undeniable positive impact. To talk about unemployment rates does not have to mean that you are running down economic liberalisation. As a matter of fact, one of the un-stated goals of liberalisation is that — creation of jobs.
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