India has taken the challenges of joblessness among the youth with greater sense of urgency. The efforts though are slow and progressive, there is a need to expand initiatives with huge participation of corporate agencies, local government bodies and civil society. There is a need to target different age groups with different educational background. The challenge would also be to build skills in limited time so that multiplier effects are seen and served. One estimate shows that there are over 8 million youth coming out of our colleges each year! Now that is a challenge.
The former President, Abdul Kalam, used to say: Our youth must become job creators, and not job seekers. Availability of easy loans and various subsidies given by government to promote job opportunities are only the starters. The main menu should have: (a) facilitating registration of all employees even in smallest business in the country; (b) a strong churn management framework to route the skills of employees churned out from various industries and utilize the same for other useful purposes; (c) roll out mega plans for building micro, small and medium enterprises that actually employ a lot more persons per revenue; (d) review education system across the country to infuse employability at various levels of education and broad base opportunities considering linguistic and ethnic diversities. For example, whether a doctor learns biology and surgery in English, Hindi or Bengali or Malayalam or any other language should little matter. These are matters that do not change because science behind it is the same. So, classification of jobs based on skills and knowledge need to be appropriately managed to ensure that literacy deprived are not socially and economically secluded.
One final point: stop all taxes and cut down the size of government. This would reduce unnecessary hassles. Simple system of "transaction tax" should be brought in except for companies and institutions which deal in profit and loss. Transaction tax would be like: for every spending and income up to 200,000 rupees, say 1 % tax is automatically deducted at the time of receiving and at withdrawal or payment; for higher slabs increase the interest rates. So, every time one withdraws or spends, the person pays tax. This would keep the social principles of the rich pay more, while ensuring parity and transparency. But for that, we have to move faster towards plastic currency at every step. Once money is open, people won't mind spending. And spending is the essential for any growth and growth is a lot about jobs and earning.
