When did you last read or hear a discussion take place on joblessness and unemployment in Goa or the rest of India? Your answer would probably be pretty long ago. So then, is everything fine on this front? Far from it....
It would be better if qualified economists could take up such issues; but this doesn't seem to be happening often. Take a look at the recent post by the articulate YouTuber Akash "Deshbhakt" Banerjee. His video, which has got over a million views already, is titled "How bad is India's Unemployment crisis and Why Did Politicians Lie to us?"
In it, he addresses the situation in India as a whole, the recent growth in self-employment, the nature of this self-employment (and the quality of the jobs it is offering). Citing a number of statistics and figures, Banerjee makes a case that all is not well.
He writes: "Its a problem that has grown over the decades and has become the biggest challenge for India. Yet no political party will talk about it openly; no one will proclaim a solution... because there are no more easy solutions." But, he goes on to add, the official figures indeed point to a rosy situation. India has 93% employment.
But this is hardly the case if one goes by encounters in real life too. Issues of high youth unemployment have also been increasingly making news -- after a long gap -- in India. The Mint quotes the ILO, International Labour Organisation, as saying that 83% of jobless Indians are youth.
The Indian Express cited a report by the Institute for Human Development and the ILO in end-March 2024 to say: "Informal employment has risen -- around half the jobs in the formal sector are of an informal nature. Self-employment and unpaid family work has also increased, especially for women. Almost 82% of the workforce is engaged in the informal sector, and nearly 90% is informally employed, the report said."
There are also reports about job scams; India Inc tightening scrutiny for women job seekers; only 45% of India's graduate job-seekers being actually employable; job-seekers being swindled; and even fraudsters using ONGC's name to dupe Goan job-seekers. Job-seekers from Haryana were quoted as saying that it's "better to die in Israel than of hunger here". A CBI probe found Indians were lured with jobs to fight in the Russian war (i.e. "support jobs with the Russian Army).
One of the WhatsApp groups you could encounter online, offers to act as a Goan jobs portal. What's on offer there? Most of the jobs coming up are low-end ones -- kitchen assistants (commis) for an Indian restaurant at Mopa (Rs 15000 to 24,000 pm). chef de partie (tandoor), "van service executives" (right, this actually translates to delivery boys), bikers (delivery boys and girls) for a logistics company (Rs 17,000 in hand), regional HR for a finance company (with the 'package' of as low as Rs2 LPA, or lakhs per annum). Go figure how much that converts into, each month.
Some jobs are advertised as "permanent", as if today's generation has come to not even expect that. Kitchen helpers in Mandrem, contractual staff for a school, and such are the jobs on offer. Occasionally, you come across better promises from the (sometimes controversial) real estate sector, or pharma.
If we go to the Kadamba bus terminal in Panaji on any evening, you'll run into a lot many Konkani-English speaking Goan young people. They're headed for IT jobs in places like Bengaluru or Pune, and that is not a good sign either. Often, discussions over jobs and joblessness in Goa gets caught up in distracting agendas. Politicians tend to focus on the "sons of the soil" angle, leaving aside how many are actually getting jobs in Goa amidst all the claims of how affluent this small State has turned.
At other times, policy planners bring in controversial projects, and say those are essential for creating jobs. But the skills available here, and job preferences, seem to be hardly taken into account while planning for the Goa of tomorrow. Likewise, the natural habitat, which once sustained so many Goans, is being destroyed at fast pace.
In data given in the Goa Assembly on February 9, 2024, the Labour and Employment Minister Atanasio Monserrate told MLA Cruz Silva that there were a total of 153,989 job-seekers on the live register of the employment exchange.
The break-up might come as a surprise. This comprised of 107 PhDs, 11,575 post-graduates, 33,486 graduates, 46,302 twelfth standard passed, 21,365 SSC holders, 11,189 ITI holders, even 5,248 engineers, 4,374 polytechnic diploma holders (in engineering), 1,205 B.Ed degree holders, 526 with a diploma in education, 143 doctors with an MBBS degree, 213 medical graduates (ayurveda and homeopathy), 577 B.Pharm degree holders, 1,897 paramedics, 127 with degrees in home science, and 75 architecture graduates!
In another answer, given in the Assembly on August 7, 2023, Minister Monserrate told Yuri Alemao: "The figures of employed and unemployed are based on the information furnished by the candidate / applicant at the time of online registration and merely registering with Employment Exchange does not mean the candidates are unemployed.... The exact employment scenario in Goa cannot be ascertained based on the registrants of Employment Exchange."
This comes across as a rather blatant move to either be blissfully unaware of the extent of the problem, or not to admit to it.
Going by information available in the public domain, around March 2023, Goa had 363,443 employed people. Besides, we are also told that Goa has the second highest unemployment rate in India, at 9.7%, which is higher than the national average of 3.2%.
If one goes by the number of job-seekers, the 9.7% figure too hardly looks real. The situation could be far worse. Just because someone is not registered on the Employment Exchange, it does not mean one does not need a job.
(To register, you need a 15-year residential certificate. If you don't renew your registration within two months of it falling due, the registration is 'deemed lapsed'. How many who registered have got any calls for jobs?) Obviously, this is an issue which is severely ignored, and deprived of the attention it rightly deserves.
