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The big budget announcement of five major employment related schemes sounds impressive. The schemes are to have an ambitious outlay of INR 2 million spread over five years to facilitate jobs and skills and other opportunities for 4.1 million youth. The Economic Survey made a strong case for employment, urging the private sector to create jobs, citing lower taxes in 2019 and higher profits after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister’s employment package must be seen alongside other human welfare initiatives.

Any evidence-based roadmap to sustainable mass employment with dignity must begin by recognizing the race to the bottom for wages when unlimited unskilled workers are available. Let’s not forget that the Periodic Labor Force Survey 2019-20 found that an employee is in the top 10% if they earn ₹25,000 per month. Short-term skills programs had low long-term placements. This is often due to the low wage for a decent life in urban areas. Many returned to their villages to do something else.

Evidence also points to continuity of education and skills. Monthly per capita consumption is highest in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim. These states also have better human development indicators. Odisha, despite promoting short-term qualification, has low per capita consumption in the absence of robust high school/higher/vocational opportunities in institutions.

Mass employment with dignity requires productivity gains. While it is good for the Economic Survey to encourage the private sector to create jobs, it must be understood that the state also has a role in determining minimum wages and ensuring high quality public goods. There is sufficient evidence that public employment per unit of population in India is much lower than it is in most developed countries. What should be the key policy initiatives in creating sustainable mass employment with dignity?

Qualification needs

First, start from the bottom through decentralized community action to identify skill needs. Community ownership of state programs comes only through direct community action. Gram sabha or basti samitis in urban areas can play a critical role in delivering government programs to the people. The steps can be as follows: Create a register of all those seeking employment/self-employment. Create a plan for each young person in partnership with professionals at cluster level. Well-educated professionals are needed on a fixed-term appointment at local government level to ensure evidence-based outcomes. Make it the basis for finding skills providers and employers. Let the disciples also rely on such a community to connect. The result will be transformative. Let’s start from the bottom.

Second, it converges initiatives for education, health, skills, nutrition, livelihoods and employment (at local government level) with women’s collectives. This will ensure community accountability with unbundled funds, functions and officials for effective quality outcomes. Employment does not improve in isolation. All human development indicators perform better when they evolve and converge. Untied funds are transformative because communities make effective choices. India’s failings in public goods (education, health, nutrition, environment and sanitation) can improve through such an approach. We need to invest more money in these sectors, through decentralized community action.

Education and employment

Third, introduce need-based professional courses/certificate programs along with undergraduate programs (BA, B.Sc., B. Com.) in every college. This has been done in the past. It must become mandatory in every college. Give them the resources to experiment. For example, there are some colleges in Mumbai that offer certificate courses (with graduation) like tour guide, counselor and so on. This will greatly improve employability at scale. Make graduate programs employable.

Fourth, standardize nursing and allied health courses in all states as per international standards. Nurses, Geriatric Caregivers and Healthcare Paramedics are in demand at scale in and outside India. The biggest problem is the uneven quality of the institutions and the absence of a standardized curriculum and course duration. We need to standardize these skill sets to international standards.

Fifth, create community cadres of caregivers to run universal nurseries so that women can work without fear. We have an anganwadi service of four to six hours, but the number of infants is more than a nursery carer can handle. We need to create a community cadre of nursery carers who can be paid by local authorities/women’s collective after intensive training. The Community Resource Persons of the Rural Livelihood Mission is a good model to follow. Community cadres may have multiple livelihoods in agriculture, animal husbandry, non-agricultural opportunities and retail shops.

Sixth, invest in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), polytechnics as skill development centers for feeder schools. Absence of quality and up-to-date infrastructure in many ITIs, polytechnics and rural self-employment training institutes (RSETIs) is a very critical gap in an era of upskilling and reskilling. Institutions must be autonomous and run in the community. These technical institutions can also function as a hub for feeder schools. Schools must develop an equivalence framework for academic and professional contributions in terms of credits and hours. The focus should be on states/districts with the least institutional structure for vocational education. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have large capacity which has helped production in those states. Human capital matters.

Seventh, introduce enterprise and start-up skills through high school professionals. Schools should introduce technology and enterprise as a subject from primary/high school level. It is important that experimentation and innovation with an understanding of business processes be part of the regular school curriculum. Professional visits to schools can provide students with finishing skills; employment/enterprise follows.

Eighth, they have a model of sharing apprenticeships with industry at scale. This is critical when it comes to opportunities in the manufacturing sector or even the service sector. Qualification costs need to be shared with potential employers as independent government funded qualification is not always the best way to go. If industry doesn’t have a stake in apprenticeships, it doesn’t work.

Capital and business loans

Ninth, streamline working capital loans for women-led/first-generation businesses to enable them to scale. Lessons from rural Livelihoods Mission’s lakhpati didis highlight the challenges in getting working capital loans. While efforts to create comprehensive credit histories of every female borrower are ongoing, technology can be a very important factor in moving to scale. The Reserve Bank Innovation Hub and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission are trying to come up with innovations that will give banks the confidence to lend on a larger scale. The success of NRLM’s Start Up Village Enterprise Program (SVEP) highlights the importance of hand-holding, the Community Enterprise Fund and end-to-end solutions for first-generation entrepreneurs.

Tenth, start a universal skills accreditation program for skills-providing institutions and let the state and industry jointly sponsor candidates for courses. Skills providers can be accredited after a rigorous assessment process. Candidates can be co-sponsored by the state and employers.

Eleventh, use 70% funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2,500 water-scarce and high-scarcity blocks, impacting the poorest 20 families . Individual beneficiary schemes under MGNREGA enable livelihood security through income generating initiatives such as livestock sheds, irrigation wells, work sheds and so on. Focus on skills for higher productivity of MGNREGA employees. Better wage rates will facilitate a dignified life at scale in very poor regions.

Twelfth, apprenticeships at scale can facilitate the absorption of young people into the workplace. The ladder must go up. The focus must be on acquiring skills, otherwise it can be routinized, offering a scholarship only as an incentive. The government’s condition for employer subsidies in any form must always be for living wages on successful completion of the apprenticeship. Let’s create a higher order economy with higher productivity and a better quality of life for workers.

Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant. The opinions expressed are personal