Struggling India with Lack of Jobs

Struggling India with Lack of Jobs

The grass is always greener on the other side, and this proverb is aptly right for describing the mindset of policymakers in India. There is no job in the market, and the government is boasting on a daily basis that we are the fifth largest economy in the world. If the economy does not provide an ecosystem for educated people to live peacefully on their feet, then questions must be asked naturally. And this is the exact scenario in India.

A research scholar, Pooja, has completed her PhD from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and she has been looking for jobs for months but has not gotten one so far. Her educational details are as follows to give you a glimpse of struggling India:

Educational Details

Normally, the education cost incurred by parents every year in metros from standard 1^st to 12^th would be 2 lakhs. Such a huge cost on basic education leads the students nowhere when it comes to employment. And basic education is the fundamental right of every Indian student, but this is applicable only to government institutions. Private institutions are free to capitalize on it. 

The Indian union government has increased the expenditure on education from 2.9% to 6% while presenting the interim budget in parliament for 2024, the highest ever in the world after Norway, after the recommendation of the National Education Policy 2020. The national education spending, which includes funding for both school and higher education, is allotted approximately INR 1.13 trillion (£11.3 billion) in the budget. A budget of approximately £352 million has been given to the technical and vocational education sector in the meantime.

Sanchita Dalal was a working professional as a senior content writer with an MA in English who lost her job in May 2023 with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), and since then she has been looking for jobs. She is the mother of two children and finds it hard to make both ends meet. Talking to Insightfultake, she said, “I have been applying for 50 to 100 jobs on job portals on a daily basis, but there has been no response so far. I feel dejected and hopeless. I do not know what to say or do.”

If 18 years of formal education does not make a person up to mark for the industry to get a job, then the government of the day must be blamed for it. Shashank Singh, a resident of Bareilly (UP) has done MCA in 2017, but he failed to get any job. Then he shifted to New Delhi in hope of getting any job to earn his bread and butter. He failed miserably and shifted back to hometown to become the burden of his parents.

We live in a country where PhD holders apply for peon jobs that have an eligibility criteria of class V. Such shocking news comes from the state, whose stake is required to make any political party form government in the centre. The Economic Times of India published this story where 3,700 PhD holders, 50,000 graduates, and 28,000 PGs have applied for 62 posts of messengers in the UP police. 

India has become a market for skilled, semi-skilled, and labourers. With such a population's potential, you can run and sustain the economy, but progress and growth will be a pipe dream. In the last 20 years, India has not been able to produce a quality mobile that can match international standards. You can operate a mobile device without knowledge, but you cannot manufacture it without knowledge and research.  In other words, India has become a tool of economic progress and growth for other countries, but it cannot translate the economic growth and progress to its own benefits.