THE OTHER SIDE OF INDIA'S JOBS STORY

The bigger problem is the nature of employment, rather than unemployment, and the realistic solution could be fostering farm-related enterprises

- TN NINAN

The official figures say unemployment is less than 3 per cent. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, using a different definition, puts it closer to 7 per cent. These may be correct in a technical sense, but are the wrong numbers to focus on.

Because only about 58 per cent of our population in the working age group of a billion people, actually works. This is up from 52 per cent, but a lot of the increase is of women doing unpaid work, or people falling back on farming. In any case, it was around 65 per cent in the past, about the level in many countries. China's figure is more than 70 per cent. For various reasons, tens of millions of mostly women have stopped looking for work, and dropped out of the labour market.

Employment in agriculture still involves close to half our workforce. While there are variations, farm incomes are invariably low, because too many people produce too little. We don't need 250 million people to produce what our agriculture does.

China produces two-and-a-half times as much with 175 million people in agriculture. If our agriculture were properly organized, anything up to 100 million workers could progressively leave our farms without the agricultural output suffering. Income per head would then go up for those who remain in agriculture.

So why are so many excess numbers engaged in farming? Because they have nowhere else to go. All of them couldn't possibly be fully employed. It is a sign of widespread underemployment that 155 million have registered themselves under the rural employment guarantee scheme.