Promote employment

Sir — This refers to the Article, “Not planning but action needed” (October 24) by VV Sundar. One of the major avenues to create jobs in our country is tourism as India has tremendous potential to be a major tourist destination. As for example, Krishnagar — a town of West Bengal — can magnet tourists from all over the world for its famous clay models. 

Tourism can do magic in solving unemployment problem as 

tourism-industry requires labour-intensive-technology. Switzerland is an ideal example where a country’s potentiality has blossomed to the maximum by making tourism its major industry. 

However, such a thing cannot be possible without Government’s action and investment. Thanks to disinvestment policy, India’s unemployment problem has been growing since 1991 liberalisation of economy that has, unfortunately, been followed by all successive UPA and NDA Governments. Employment to population ratio is a clear indicator of what is the general outcome of this policy. While employment to population ratio was 58.6 per cent in 1994, it has, alarmingly, come down to 52.4 per cent in 2016. 

The disinvestment policy and the policy of ignoring cottage industries, farming and tourism are the reasons for growing unemployment in India.