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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Mahesh Vyas of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) , interviewed by Govindraj Ethiraj (IndiaSpend.com)

-IndiaSpend.com

Latest data indicate a structural shift away from organised sector jobs towards more insecure self-employment or unorganised sector jobs, Mahesh Vyas of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) tells us in this interview

Mumbai: "We have an ageing population. If we have shrinking employment in urban places, if the better educated graduates or postgraduates are the ones who are losing jobs, how can we recover the economy from the downslide that we have gone through?" says Mahesh Vyas, the managing director of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Nine months after the COVID-19 lockdown, India still has 15 million missing jobs when compared to the pre-COVID 19 period, data from CMIE show, with more young people and women losing jobs than older people and men, respectively. Women, for instance, are 11% of the employed workforce but they made up 52% of the jobs lost.

Is this a structural shift in the economy or is it still an after-effect of COVID-19's economic impact? IndiaSpend interviewed Vyas to find out.

Edited excerpts:

* What were the overall employment numbers in India, where have we come to now and why is this particular number--15 million--significant?

When the lockdown first began, the economy was effectively shut down, there was an understandably large increase in job losses. And that meant that people who actually had employment lost that employment, although it was informal in nature. So forget about people having confirmed jobs or permanent jobs who lost jobs, but all the people, or almost all the people, who had informal jobs in the unorganised sector were out of a job because of the lockdown. These people are mostly paid on a daily wage-basis, they were paid on the basis of the number of hours worked or piecemeal basis and all of them lost their jobs and lost their livelihood.

But, as the economy opened up, these people started getting their jobs again, it looked like a fantastic recovery as well. But gradually we saw losses in the more permanent jobs, salaried jobs, losses in that category increased and then sustained. And that was worrisome. Although the jobs came back, the quality of jobs that came back was not as good. This was the story in May, June and July and slowly, we saw that the recovery process in terms of employment was petering out. But what we see at the end of nine months, which is a fairly long period after the severe lockdown, on a base of about 405 million jobs, we have a deficit of 15 million jobs. It is not a small number. It is nearly a fairly large chunk that still does not have jobs even after nine months. Forgot about the population growing and the need for us to grow more jobs. This is one part of the story.

But we see that job losses, no matter which way you cut it, is of a distressing kind. Like it is the urbanites who are losing jobs more than rural jobs, women who are losing jobs more than men losing jobs. It is graduates and post graduates who are losing jobs more than others who are losing jobs. Youngsters losing jobs and not the older people. The composition of this loss of jobs is worrisome. If we have an ageing population, if we have shrinking employment in urban places, if the better educated graduates or postgraduates are the ones who are losing jobs, how can we recover the economy from the downslide that we have gone through? So that, I think, is the biggest worry. We can say that the employment is back but the nature of that employment recovery is such that it raises questions and that is the point I want to make regarding the recovery process and the sustainability of the recovery process.

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Image Courtesy: IndiaSpend.com