Jobs, livelihoods matter most to Indians

There is nothing worse for a young man or woman than being jobless. And this is the precise reason why Indians from across the country don’t mind crossing oceans and mountains in search of gainful employment as long as it helps keep their families happy and earns them two square meals a day. On Tuesday, reports came in that the Gujarat police have arrested a Vadodara-based woman allegedly working for international gangs involved in trafficking job aspirants to Myanmar and Thailand for “cyber slavery.”
 
There has also been a crackdown on job agents who are allegedly recruiting Indians in all probability from impoverished families, promising them lucrative jobs abroad. Many of them have finally landed up fighting for the Russian Army against Ukraine in a bloody war and are sadly getting killed. Imagine the plight of their grief-stricken families who live in the hope that their kin have secured good jobs abroad. And then dawns the horrifying realisation that they have been fighting someone else’s war, all to make a living.

Reports say that approximately 10 million students graduate from Indian universities annually and their first priority is getting a job with a select few going for post-graduate studies depending on their financial capacity. So it is no surprise that recent data from the Centre for Monitoring of the Indian Economy (CMIE) shows a much higher state of joblessness than what one would have imagined. There are even worrisome reports that as many as 44.5% of Indians aged in the 20–24 bracket are unemployed, despite many of them holding graduate or even postgraduate degrees.

According to the ‘India Skills’ Report 2025, only 54.8% of Indian graduates are considered employable. As far as the government’s job schemes are concerned, one big source of hope was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which has been providing succour to the landless rural populace and keeping them away from the edge of starvation. The few hundred rupees they earn working on construction and related projects has played a massive rule in bringing the smiles back on the faces of the poverty-ridden masses in Rural India.

Now comes the shocking report that as many as 27 lakh MGNREGS workers have been deleted from the rolls because of something as simple as KYC norms. One can be sure that these are people who have been finding it hard to make both ends meet and saw the job scheme as a blessing to keep hunger away from their doors. Amidst this, Donald Trump’s tariff war on India has made things worse as most exporting units targeting US markets are labour-intensive MSMEs. One of the largest sectors is of course apparels and textiles and there must be garment workers now going through an agonising phase fearing loss of their jobs.

Massive job generation is needed and more so because India’s working-age population is expected to increase by at least 12 million per year until 2030. This means we need to create 9 million jobs every year to deploy the working-age labour surplus, says a report. Is the government ready for this task? Or does it intend to continue focusing on polarising issues and on electoral victories whether they are by fair or foul means? India no doubt is reaching breaking point as far as unemployment is concerned.