The Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship is internally debating whether it should impart skills for less- productive jobs to reduce migration to urban centres and boost village economies.
"The data seems to suggest that whenever we skill people...many of them ultimately migrate to urban areas. That's where the jobs are," said Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary in the Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship.
"So should the skill ministry keep spending money for this kind of migration or should we also be focussing on maybe slightly less-productive jobs where we try to grow the GDP of villages? I don't know."
"In our ministry, we are having an intense debate that should we also focus on creating jobs or skilling of jobs where kids remain in the village only… (maybe) a 6,000-rupee job in the village is probably better than 10,000-rupee job 200 kilometres away or 20,000-rupee job 2,000 kilometres away. That's a debate we are having and we are quite ambivalent about it. So we will be experimenting on this," Aggarwal said on July 13 at the India Policy Forum, organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
The Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship oversees all skill development initiatives in India with the aim of eliminating mismatches between demand and supply of skilled manpower. These schemes and initiatives are both short and long term in nature.
Aggarwal's comments come as the country continues to face a difficult employment situation. With economic growth already slowing down in the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic, the last two years have seen incomes take a hit. Economists have also raised the issue of the Indian economy not being able to generate enough high-quality jobs – jobs that provide higher income.
Last month, the Centre announced the Agnipath scheme to boost employment among the youth. However, following violent protests in many parts of the country against the temporary nature of the scheme, the government has held talks with state-owned enterprises and announced other measures to provide employment opportunities after the end of the four-year service term of 'Agniveers'.
While India does not have official real-time data on employment, data released earlier this month by private firm Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy said the unemployment rate rose to 7.8 percent in June with the loss of 13 million jobs.
At the event on July 13, the skills ministry secretary also expressed his worries about how certain jobs that could pay well were not attractive enough due to their lower social status.
"Many jobs which are well-paying, either in self-employment or in the formal sector, they are non-aspirational. For example, a plumber or an AC (air-conditioner repair) guy earning Rs 40,000-50,000 per month is at a socially very low level compared to (someone working in) data entry… This is something as a society that I am despondent about," Aggarwal said.
He added that the attraction of potentially high-paying software and information technology sector jobs was also skewing education patterns.
"No one wants to go into other streams. And those who land in other streams ultimately want a job in the IT sector. That has a very detrimental effect…"
Present at the same event was Principal Economic Adviser Sanjeev Sanyal, also a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Responding to a question on why infrastructure in India was not of the same quality as in other countries despite many Indian workers and companies working on these overseas projects, Sanyal said the problem was one of contracts.
"The contracts themselves are a problem because of a mindset. After all, all those fancy buildings in Singapore and Dubai are built not only by Indian workers but very often Indian companies like L&T. So why is it that they aren't building them here? Because of this whole mindset of L1," Sanyal said.
L1 refers to the least cost selection method, which says a contract goes to the lowest bid received in a tender. In late October, the government allowed its entities to use quality-cum-cost based selection method for procurement and non-consultancy work in certain cases. As such, the lowest bidders will not necessarily win projects.
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