UNEMPLOYMENT in Punjab

UNEMPLOYMENT in Punjab, especially among the educated youth, is very high. On March 24 the problem of unemployment was debated in the Vidhan Sabha. In response to a question, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal stated that there are 9.58 lakh persons unemployed in the state.  Gurdaspur district tops the list by having 1.57 lakh unemployed youth followed by Sangrur (1.17 lakh). High unemployment is also reported in Ferozepur (92,247), Jalandhar (58,886), Hoshiarpur (54,111), Patiala (49,566), Ludhiana (46,651) and Mansa (42,648).
Earlier, a survey conducted by the Labour Bureau, Chandigarh, Ministry of Labour, revealed a high incidence of unemployment in Punjab. The survey suggested 10.5 per cent of the total workforce as unemployed in the state against the national average of 9.4 per cent.
The high incidence of unemployment is accompanied by widespread drug addiction among Punjabi youth. This deadly combination is rapidly pushing Punjabi youth to the threshold of a “lost generation”. At this critical juncture, the state should assign top priority to mitigate the problem of unemployment and in the process improve the growth profile of the state and also save youth from being an easy prey to drugs.
Employment generation has hardly been the focus of a development strategy in Punjab. Boosting agricultural production has been the primary focus of the much celebrated growth model. The implicit principle of the model is that benefits of high growth in agriculture percolate down and automatically reduce income inequality, unemployment and poverty.
This “trickle-down hypothesis” did work partially in Punjab with regard to income inequality and poverty. The model, however, was a total failure in case of employment generation. The nature of agricultural activities does not match with the skills and preferences of educated youth and hence the benefits of all job avenues of expanding agricultural activities have largely been reaped by migrant labour.
Another handicap of the growth model is its weak sectoral linkages within the state. The sectoral input-output flows suggest that only a marginal share of increased agricultural production has found its way to industry for processing within the state. A lion’s share of Punjab agricultural production has been exported to food-deficit states of India.
Thus, benefits of the agriculture sector of Punjab have been realised in the form of ago-based industries in food-deficit states. The “stunning” growth trajectory of the agriculture sector has not only resulted in “jobless growth” but also in “job-shrinking growth”. Negative employment elasticity of the agriculture sector in Punjab confirms the “job-shrinking growth” phenomenon. 
It is not just that the structure of the Punjab economy in which agriculture predominates is unfavorable to employment of the educated; the mediocre quality of education is equally responsible for unemployment. Punjab has a good network of educational institutions. Barring a few, these institutions produce substandard students having huge employability deficits.
The quality of pass-outs is no way near the skill requirements of industry. The professional and applied courses have mainly adopted the teaching pedagogy of liberal arts disciplines having emphasis on classroom teaching only. The lip-service to summer training and internship and non-involvement of potential employers in course development exercises have reduced many professional colleges to degree-printing institutions.
A survey conducted by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) indicates that employability of professional courses is around 25 per cent, which also includes top-ranking institutions like IITs having 100 per cent placements. If the top-ranking institutions are excluded the employability will come down to be abysmally low. In case of Punjab this phenomenon is more pronounced, given the large number of seats remaining vacant in professional private colleges.
The employability deficit of Punjabi youth is also evident from a recently held recruitment drive by the Punjab Police for the posts of constable. Though the eligibility for the post was +2 pass, many of the candidates having graduate and postgraduate degrees, including M.B.A., M.C.A., M.Sc., B.E./B.Tech, and L.L.B, were among the aspirants.
A paradigm shift is taking place in the philosophy of development. According to the emerging paradigm, human resources are the new drivers of growth. The predominance of young human resources in the profile of population has been described as a “demographic dividend”. In India youth comprise about 65 per cent of the population against the world average of 18 per cent. The human resource-centric model of growth is most suitable to Punjab as its production-oriented sectors — agriculture and industry — cannot be relied upon for future growth.
The Finance Minister of Punjab has made a large 52 per cent hike in the budgetary allocation for education, acknowledging the pivotal role human capital plays in growth. For reaping the benefits of human capital, the state needs to evolve an aggressive strategy for gainfully employing its educated youth. A good employment strategy will not only give a fillip to growth but also liberate youth from the clutches of deadly drugs. 
The Green Revolution is being extended to food-deficit states, which no longer depend entirely on Punjab. A huge quantity of food grains procured in Punjab gets spoiled due to FCI mismanagement. In the light of this Punjab should start processing its food grains and export only processed products. This policy shift will encourage the setting up of agro-based industries, which, being labour-intensive, will offer sizeable jobs to matriculate onward pass-outs.
For preparing 10th standard and +2 pass-outs for agro-based industries, the existing Industrial Training Institutes and Polytechnics should be upgraded to community colleges. The “community college model” has worked very successfully in Canada and has also been adopted in some south Indian states. Community colleges are run mainly by the local community, especially by local employers. The curriculum is designed as per job skills required by the local market. This model can align education with the job market.
For improving the employability of college and university students, Punjab should start a “quality drive” to cleanse its educational institutions. For weeding out substandard educational institutions, the state in consultation with the affiliating universities and boards should conduct a rigorous academic quality and employability audit of all the institutions.
The institutions which fail to qualify the audit test should be given five years to improve, failing which these should automatically cease to exist. State funding should be linked with the result of quality audit. No doubt, there are national-level accreditation agencies, the educational institutions in the state have not opted for accreditation on a larger scale in the absence of rewards and penalties associated with accreditation.
Along with undertaking a quality drive, the government should make it obligatory for universities, boards and autonomous bodies to involve all stake-holders, particularly potential employers, in curriculum development and teaching. This practice will bridge the gap between skill formation in institutions and skill requirements in industry.
The lecture-based teaching pedagogy should give way to field-based, problem-solving, case-method and hands-on methods of learning. A complete dependence on an external examination should be replaced by a proper mix of external examination and continuous evaluation. Giving adequate weightage to continuous evaluation will make the learning process a regular, stress-free phenomenon and, in the long run, help in improving employability of the pass-outs. 
Youth prefer government and corporate jobs. However, the organised sector accounts for 10 per cent employment only. For enabling youth to find gainful employment in the unorganised sector, particularly for starting self-employment ventures, two policy recommendations are suggested. First, the state should encourage educated unemployed youth to form co-operatives for self-employment. Subsidies and soft loans can motivate youth to form co-operatives.
Secondly, unemployed youth are generally averse to self-employment due to bureaucratic procedures and corrupt practices associated with government schemes, including those Centrally funded. For overcoming these malpractices, fund sanctioning job fairs on the pattern of placement fairs should be organised in technical institutes. Teams of governmental agencies and bank officials should sanction subsidies and loans on the spot by following user-friendly and transparent procedures.