The Causes of Unemployment in India

It is a pity to see a long queue of young persons, who have devoted ten to sixteen precious years of their lives to their studies standing before the Employment Exchange Office. They are unemployed and long to get a petty job to earn their bread. Is it not shocking and surprising that the years they spent in getting education proved just a sheer waste of time and made them idle gossipers, haters of physical labor, and slaves of comforts?

We will not find carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, or even barbers in this queue of employment searchers. This clearly shows the failure of the modern educational system and the incompetence of our policymakers. So if we really want to solve the unemployment problem, the educational system must be made job-oriented. Now, our country does not need only clerks. She is in need of persons who can serve her with their physical and mental skills. There is an urgent need of revolutionising the whole educational system so that it can cope with the new demands of our free country.

Unemployment means that while people are willing to work, they have no work to do. The most important reason for India's poverty and backwardness is her problem of unemployment. The advancement in modern technology has invented machines, robots, and computers which can perform the work of thousands of persons alone. These machines need only one or two operators and thus they snatch bread from the hands of thousands of persons. So this type of technological advancement has also aggravated the problem of unemployment. Our government should adopt automation in such a prudent way that this problem can be solved.

The government should give due importance to small scale industries, cottage industries, and labor-intensive industries. These industries must be given financial aid, raw material, and sales facilities by the government. Unemployed persons should be encouraged to get the training concerning these industries.

The increasing population growth is also one of the factors which is contributing to the unemployment problem. Mere development of the country cannot create so many job opportunities as are required. We must try to decrease population growth by propagating family planning programs. The peasants, workers, and other classes of the masses who are uneducated should be motivated to adopt family planning methods. The villages should be made self-sufficient in their economy so that the growing population can get employment. This can be done by setting up agro-industries in rural areas.