The availability of credible figures can be the trump card that will ensure the success of skill-related initiatives and will realise our dream of a developed India. Sadly, over the years, the generation of good data has not been given the importance it deserves in the Government’s scheme of things
After seven decades, it looks like the policy-making framework of the country is soon going to get its third pillar. Three critical elements for policy-making on which the central bank relies world over are: Data on prices, data on value added and data on employment. However, ever since independence, India had been working with only two elements — data on prices (consumer price index, CPI) and data on value-added (gross domestic product, GDP).
The wait, however, may finally be over. Amidst major financial and business reforms by the Government, that have been the cynosure of all the eyes, this seemingly insignificant declaration by the Chief Statistician of India, TCA Anant, marks a ground-breaking event in the history of policy-making in India.
True to the socialist preference and image of our nation, for the first five decades, we were focused towards measuring public data — poverty, earnings etc. Then came an era when skill development became the talk of the nation with lots of statistics and policy-making pertaining to skills. However, it took the current Government, for whom jobs is the center policy, to add the job data to policy data. Well as it is said — better late than never! It truly marks the beginning of a holistic policy-making in India.
But why is it so importantIJ If we could survive 70 years without it, why go for it nowIJ
India as a nation is at the cusp of being amongst the developed nations. But to make that possible, policies and strategies of the country need to be holistic and aligned to this vision. look at the developed nations, like the US and the UK, and it will occur that it is not possible unless along with prices and value-added, jobs are not considered.
Can you think of an economy where you focus on output but do not care about the labour which is delivering this outputIJ And specially when the characteristic of this market (job market) can be the lead indicators of the overall outputIJ Definitely not. This, particularly, when you want to capture the behaviour of the country’s economy at the macro level. Thus, it is one of the most important steps towards a dynamic
data-driven policymaking.
Another interesting question that will arrise is: How will this data helpIJ It will impact the life of people: Having a reliable and complete registry of jobs being created and available will impact the life of job seekers. Especially for the youth that is planning to enter the job market, this data will help them in making better career decisions. In the US, the Occupational Employment Statistics programme produces employment and wage estimates annually for over 800 occupations. These estimates are available for the nation as a whole, for individual States, and for metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, and for specific industries.
Universal social security system: Having a universal social security system is important for our country to successfully leverage the phase of demographic dividend. A validated job market data available would form a strong base for implementing social security system. Not only this, reliable information of job market (both organised and unorganised), will help in framing a refined strategy to bring 4/5th of the working population under the organized sector. The UK has such programme by the name of social insurance and social assistance system. Programme like these provide assistance and a coverage to working individuals, in any period of incapacity for work due sickness, disability and various other reasons.
Holistic view of growth: This is one of the direct benefits that inclusion of job data is going to bring. With three dimensional inputs in the form of prices, output, and jobs, we will be able to derive the true picture of the country’s growth. Till now, we were not able to track situations of job-less growth that comes with better performance in terms of output and prices, but no change in employment. But when job data will be an integral part of the frame work, this problem can be resolved.
Hence if we see, inclusion of job data will bring a much-needed focus and sharpness in the policy-making. Many countries have made this transition from unorganised workforce to organised workforce, agri-focused economy to production/manufacturing-focused economies but none of them have been able to do it without getting wholesome perspective of the macro-economic indicators.
Though this initiative is still in the process of administrative consultation and yet to be finalised, we hope that it happens soon. Only time will tell, but availability of this data can be the trump card that will ensure the success all job-and-skill-related initiatives and will realise our dream of a developed India.
(The writer is co-founder and CEO, PeopleStrong)