Beyond the flashy headlines of India’s booming growth rate lies the grim reality of massive unemployment and unrest in India. The Covid-19 pandemic hit India severely in 2020, which boosted government spending to keep the economic downturn in check as a preventive measure to stabilize the GDP. However, the conditions for new investment have turned precarious and has been deteriorated by the rising inflation ever since.
Peoples’ job prospects were entirely shaken with lockdowns that followed the outbreak and the labour force participation rate dropped to as low as 40%, and it is predominantly the women and the young who have been left in the lurch. The number of working women in India dropped to 19% from 26% and their labour force participation down to an all-time low of 9% (for comparison purposes, that is same as the war-stricken Yemen), according to the data from Center for Monitoring Indian Economy. Furthermore, the rate of unemployment among the people aged 20-24 (about half of India’s populace) was estimated to be a staggering 43.7% in June, which is six times greater than the overall rate.
The only way to generate jobs and bolster industrialization on a large-scale is to have an advanced education system that bridges the employment and labour ecosystems. Else, the issue of mismatch between skills and jobs cannot be easily tractable. However, in the digital age that we live in, networks can be to connect the talent providers with talent seekers. Through it the gnawing mess of informational asymmetry can also be clinically tackled and that is what our platform Badgefree sincerely purports to do.
The so-called “blue-collar workers,” who as matter of fact are highly skilled, employed in the non-farming MSME sectors and often compulsively migrate to work form the backbone of the country’s economy. But they do not find the right jobs due to their lack of access to accurate information such as the skill requirements for the job, pay, and location. As the Periodic Survey Labour Force way back in 2018 stated “70% of the regular salaried employers had no written contracts with over half with no social security benefits whatsoever.”
The absence of verifiable profiles, shoddy documentation, zero vocational training, inability to prove employment history conclusively dims the avenues for career progression and opportunities to avail social security services, financial
aid, affordable housing, and so on. The industries obviously find it equally challenging to identify, hire and retain a talented workforce. As we know, the Coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis, abruptly throwing people’s everyday lives out of gear and leaving the logistics sector, for instance, with an attrition rate of 150-200% during the lockdown.
Not to mention, the year 2020 saw a mass general strike here in India with over 250 million workers, as several trade unions claim, taking to streets and making several demands such as, to expand the MNREGA scheme, making direct cash transfers of Rs. 7500 to all families that earn lesser than then income tax threshold, withdrawal of ostensibly anti-worker labour codes and farm laws under the garb of liberalization, restoring earlier pension schemes, etc. It was perhaps, according to some reports, the largest workers’ protest in human history, and so one can posit that the workers’ revolution in India has already begun.
As the philosopher Isabelle Stengers once noted, “Hope is the difference between probability and possibility.” The farmers’ protests, anti-Agneepath movement, the general strike have been impactful (and disruptive) enough to stop transport, banking, government and telecommunication services alongside plantations, natural production units and several other workplaces are indeed a pushback against the authority of the current regime. That said, the root problems mentioned above in the article need to be squarely addressed through a coalition of skilled employers and the industry for a fundamentally transformative change and Badgefree is a resolute step in that direction.
