| Those macro-economic numbers and the latest corporate-level data should silence the critics, but in truth these figures don't have much meaning. For one thing, they are a tiny part of total employment (about 2 per cent). For another, the decade of the 1970s saw much slower GDP growth than the 1980s, but more jobs were created in the 1970s than in the 1980s, despite the transfer in the early 1970s of many jobs from the private to the public sector, following the nationalisation of employment-intensive industries like coal mining and general insurance. |
| Even with these qualifications, some features of the list of those hiring the maximum numbers today are worth pointing out. The hiring firms are in sectors like software and banking. The employment-intensive sectors that China has used to boost jobs in manufacturing (toys, shoes, garments) are hobbled in India, and do not figure at the top of the list. A couple of textile firms do show up, but their very isolation underlines the point that if the employment laws were more flexible, India would be creating many more entry-level jobs in the organised sector. |
| Then, the scale of new hiring will almost certainly accelerate, because most companies are past the stage of downsizing in order to cut the flab and become efficient, and are now seeking to expand. The state-owned telecom system, for instance, added virtually no numbers to its payroll even as it kept expanding its network""because it was overmanned at the start. But the new private sector telecom players, who have started from scratch, are all hiring. Tata Steel has halved its workforce in the past 15 years, but it will now be hiring as it sets up new plants in new locations. The older banks announced voluntary retirement schemes a few years ago because computerisation had reduced the need for people, while the new private banks have been busy hiring at a terrific rate. These examples can be multiplied and extended to more sectors. Therefore, the fact that it is not a case of jobless growth will become more evident with each passing year. Indeed, we don't really need the statisticians to confirm the evidence that is there all around us""salaries are going through the roof as the demand for qualified people seems to be outstripping supply, and the rapid scaling up of consumer demand says the same thing. |
| In an important way, though, the debate about the private corporate sector misses the point. After all, private sector jobs increased by less than 2 million in the three decades to 2001, when the numbers below the poverty line dropped from about 55 per cent of a population of 550 million in the early 1970s, to about 26 per cent of a population of nearly a billion in the early part of this decade. The UPA government's catch-phrase of 'inclusive growth' therefore has little to do with jobs in the organised sector (or, therefore, with the reservation debate) and everything to do with the reform of agriculture (more productivity means lower food prices; more downstream food processing means more work in the countryside, where the majority live; and so on), and with introducing flexible labour laws that encourage hiring in labour-intensive sectors. The short point is that the sectors that have been reformed are creating new jobs; those that have not are not realising their employment-creating potential. |
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