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India stares at a future without jobs

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The question I have is this: what are these young men and women doing? They don't have a job, they are not in school, and they are not being trained in a trade. So what exactly are they doing all day?


http://indiatodaynews.org/about-30-of-indias-youth-are-neither-employed-nor-in-
education-or-training/


About 30% of India’s youth are neither employed nor in education or training.
India Today News EditorJuly 8, 2017
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http://www.livemint.com/Money/JYalq...ndias-youth-not-in-employment-shows-OECD.html

Harsha Jethmalani

India’s economy may be growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the world but the story on the jobs creation front is just the opposite. India’s economy will grow at 7% in the current fiscal year, according to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

But India’s rate of employment has declined and job creation has not kept up with the growing working-age population.

It lags most other countries in creating quality jobs (see chart).


Click here for enlarge

Over 30% of youth aged 15-29 in India are not in employment, education or training (NEETs). This is more than double the OECD average and almost three times that of China.

NEET is a relatively new concept.

According to the OECD, youth inactivity presents the share of young people (age 15-29) not in employment, education or training (NEET) as a percentage of the total number of young people in the corresponding age group.

“NEETs include all youth left outside paid employment and formal education and training systems. They are NEET because there are not enough quality jobs being created in the system and because they have little incentives or face too high constraints to be in the education and training systems,” said Isabelle Joumard, senior economist and head of the India desk, OECD.

Why does India fare poorly on this front? Several factors are responsible. Labour laws in India are complex and relatively strict. Employment protection legislation is restrictive, compared with other emerging economies and OECD countries, OECD said in its India Economic Survey 2017 report. “Thus, corporates in India tend to rely more on temporary contract labour, stay small or substitute labour for capital to avoid strict labour laws. Apart from that, corporate income tax has created a giant bias against labour-intensive activities,” Joumard added.

The current government is making efforts to correct the situation. It has reduced administrative requirements for complying with existing labour laws and increased transparency in routine interaction between firms and administrations, thereby making the labour regulations friendlier for job creation. More needs to be done to streamline labour laws and states have a role to play too, said Joumard.

The OECD 2017 survey also points out that for India, assessing labour market trends is made difficult by poor employment data, with information for total employment available only every five years. The last NSSO round was held in FY2011-12. More frequent data could help take policy actions in a timely manner. At 3.8% of GDP, public spending on education in India is lower than countries like Brazil and Malaysia. The focus of the government needs to shift to spending on enhancing the quality of education and vocational training. All these measures together could possibly improve India’s track record on job creation.

He will understand this when the underground water dries up. India used to be a region so rich in water, now it is so different, Bangalore looks like a semi-arid region, I heard from my colleagues, Bangalore used to be green.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...dwater-than-us-china/articleshow/58801496.cms

For the sake of humanity, please, what happens to India will affect China too.

India's water crisis is already reaching critical levels...




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/indias-wells-are-running-dry-fast_us_5943c289e4b024b7e0df4af4
India’s Wells Are Running Dry Fast
The Conversation Global, Contributor The Conversation is a collaboration between editors and academics to provide informed news analysis and commentary that’s free to read and republish.
5943c2ba15000047004e6aa8.jpg

Amit Dave/Reuters

Ratanpura Lake, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has almost completely dried up.
Asit K. Biswas, National University of Singapore; Cecilia Tortajada, National University of Singapore, and Udisha Saklani

Over the past three years, the monsoon – the rainy season that runs from June through September, depending on the region – has been weak or delayed across much of India, causing widespread water shortages.

With the onset of summer this year, southern India, particularly Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu states, are already wilting under a blistering sun and repeated heatwaves. Drought is expected to affect at least eight states in 2017, which is a devastating possibility in a country where agriculture accounted for 17.5% of GDP in 2015 and provides the livelihood for nearly half the population.

Across rural India, water bodies, including man-made lakes and reservoirs, are fast disappearing after decades of neglect and pollution.

“They have drained out the water and converted the land into a plot for schools, dispensaries, and other construction activities,” Manoj Misra of the NGO Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan warned in The Hindu newspaper as far back as 2012.



Not a drop to drink


It wasn’t always this way. For the past 2,500 years, India has managed its water needs by increasing supply.

Prior to industrialisation and the accompanying global “green revolution” in the 1960s, which saw the development of high-yield variety crops using new technologies, India’s water availability was plentiful. Households, industries and farmers freely extracted groundwater and dumped untreated waste into waterways without a second thought.

But such practices are now increasingly untenable in this rapidly growing country. Per capita availability of water has been steadily falling for over a decade, dropping from 1,816 cubic metres per person in 2001 to 1,545 cubic metres in 2011.

The decline is projected to deepen in coming years as the population grows. India, which currently has 1.3 billion people, is set to overtake China by 2022 and reach 1.7 billion in 2050.

Water scarcity is also exacerbated by a growth in water-intensive industries, such as thermal power production, extraction and mining, as India seeks to feed and power its growing population. In addition to affecting biodiversity, these activities also alter natural water systems.

Still, successive governments have pursued the same old supply-centric policies, paying little heed to the country’s waning clean water supplies.

For nearly 50 years, a misguided groundwater policy has sucked India dry; water tables have declined by an average of one metre every three years in some parts of the Indus basin, turning it into the second most over-stressed aquifer in the world, according to NASA.

Across nearly the whole country, basic sewage management is also lacking. According to the Third World Centre for Water Management, only about 10% of waste water in the country is collected and properly treated. As a result, all water bodies in and around urban centres are seriously polluted.

Today, the country is struggling to provide safe drinking water to every citizen.



What conservation?


Even so, residents of New Delhi or Kolkata today use more than twice as much water, on average, than people in Singapore, Leipzig, Barcelona or Zaragoza, according to data compiled by the Third World Research Centre.

The water use in Delhi is 220 litres per capita per day (lpcd), while some European cities boast figures of 95 to 120 lpcd.

Excess consumption is attributable in part to citizen indifference about conserving water after so many years of plentiful supply. Since large swaths of many Indian megacities lack piped supply of clean water, leaks and theft are common. Cities in India lose 40% to 50% due to leakages and non-authorised connections.

At this point, the only viable option for India would seem to be managing demand and using water more efficiently.

The country is making tentative steps in that direction. The 2016 new National Water Framework, passed emphasises the need for conservation and more efficient water use.

But under India’s Constitution, states are responsible for managing water, so central policies have little resonance. Neither the 1987 and 2012 National Water Policy documents, which contained similar recommendations to the 2016 policy, had any real impact on water use.

And after millennia of exclusive focus on expanding the water supply, the idea of curbing water consumption and increase reuse remains a mostly alien concept in India.



Water wars


Consistent supply-centric thinking has also resulted in competition for water as states negotiate the allocation of river water based on local needs.


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India’s inter-state disputes on water usage have reached a critical point.

The century-long conflict over the Cauvery River, for example, involves Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka – three major south Indian states. With each state demanding ever more water, the river simply cannot keep up.

In Karnataka, where agricultural policies are heavily skewed towards water-guzzling commercial crops, such as sugarcane, mismanaged ground and surface water are dying a slow death. Still the state continues to petition the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal for an increase in its share.

Water scarcity in Karnataka is aggravated by non-existent water quality management. Its rivers are choked with toxic pollutants, and oil-suffused lakes in Bengaluru, the capital, are reportedly catching fire.

Meanwhile, in the northern part of the country, the Ravi-Beas River is causing conflict between Punjab and Haryana states.

In India’s water wars, rivers are a resource to be harnessed and extracted for each riparian party’s maximum benefit. Very little emphasis has been placed on conserving and protecting existing water sources. And not one inter-state negotiation has prioritised pollution abatement or demand management.

Even policies from the national government, which claims to target water conservation and demand management, remain reliant on supply-side solutions. Big infrastructure programs, such as the Indian river-linking plan, envision large-scale water transfer from one river basin to another, again seeking to augment supply rather than conserve water and reduce consumption.

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Sand mining on the Cauvery river in 2017.

Prashanth NS/Flickr, CC BY-SA

For inspiration on managing demand, India could look to Berlin in Germany, Singapore and California, all of which have designed and implemented such policies in recent years. Successful measures include raising public awareness, recycling water, fixing leaks, preventing theft and implementing conservation measures such as water harvesting and stormwater management.

Between rapidly disappearing fresh water, unchecked pollution and so many thirsty citizens, India is facing an impending water crisis unlike anything prior generations have seen. If the nation does not begin aggressively conserving water, the faucets will run soon dry. There is simply no more supply to misuse.

Asit K. Biswas, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore; Cecilia Tortajada, Senior Research Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and Udisha Saklani, Independent Policy Researcher

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
 
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^30% of india's youth are not in education ! ? i read somewhere that india's youth literacy rate is around 90%

EDIT: yes it is 90% (2015 data)
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.1524.LT.ZS
btw why is the age range is from (15-29) in the above post ? atleast for checking % of people in education it should be (15-24 ) as is the case with worldbank stats . who studies till 28 or 29 years ? or ever 27 :what:
 
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:lol:, I am from blr. tell me wat else you know.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...kes-experts-fear-bangalore-uninhabitable-2025

When I was in Bangalore, they had to use water trucks to refill my hotel supply, I was shocked that in this modern era, there is still no piped water even for a 5 star hotel. Stayed in a serviced apartment in Whitefield and every morning I can see 3 ppl defecating in the open from my room window.

Yup. You are now depending on foreign labour which will eventually dry up, probably another 10 years.



:lol:

Silly argument.



Oh, we have other options for water. Like the interlinking of rivers and desalination of sea water. Even getting water from the atmosphere.

The Israelis are champions in utilizing water and we have hired them to fix our problems.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/israel-far-ahead-in-water-recycling/article19216890.ece

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india...h-netanyahu/story-I8L66GwVfhB4TVrIFbvAjL.html

Half their fresh water comes from the sea, and India owns an entire ocean.
As long there are countries like India around the world, there is always cheap labour. Your demographic dividend is only a dividend to MNCs selling stuff to your market. I hope you realize this.

It might sound silly now, but looking at my dad who is 65, I would think he is more active, smarter and healthier than my granddad when he was 60+. Better healthcare, nutrition and technology is enabling older people to be more productive than ever before. My boss is in his late 60s and still going strong. This is just my observation, you can dismiss it, no issues there.

You fail to understand the scale of the problem in India compared to Israel. Whats the point of interlinking rivers when there is not enough water? Maybe you can enlighten me.

you need 1000 GW for population of India's size



Wait till the automation revolution hits
He still doesn't see the incoming threat. Anyway, all the best, if India and China doesn't solve this problem, the world will feel the effects.
 
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As long there are countries like India around the world, there is always cheap labour. Your demographic dividend is only a dividend to MNCs selling stuff to your market. I hope you realize this.

Yes, our demographics is also our advantage. We will export labour.

It might sound silly now, but looking at my dad who is 65, I would think he is more active, smarter and healthier than my granddad when he was 60+. Better healthcare, nutrition and technology is enabling older people to be more productive than ever before. My boss is in his late 60s and still going strong. This is just my observation, you can dismiss it, no issues there.

Your dad is part of the lucky generation, like I am for India. My earnings will shoot up dramatically as I work. And when I retire I will have a lot of money. Your grandpa has seen that.

You are only partly lucky because you may not have enough money for your old age. You can't say for sure because your economy has now started tumbling.

Your son is unlucky because he will start off with a lower salary than you did and his salary will be depressed for decades and then he has to take care of you when he doesn't have as much money as you or your dad. That's when you get sent to an old age home. Cheers.

Of course, when I say 'you' I mean an average Chinese. You in person may be quite rich, but that's like less than 1% of China.

And you are mistaken if you believe you want to work the rest of your life. You can only work if you have no other choice. Many people in the west retire early.

You haven't realized this, only the smart people in your country have realized this, that your country has lost 10 years of growth because of your 1 child policy. Harvard recently said China's average growth for the coming 10 years will only be 4.4%. Good luck.

You fail to understand the scale of the problem in India compared to Israel. Whats the point of interlinking rivers when there is not enough water? Maybe you can enlighten me.

Who are you kidding? There's a hell lot of water. Water is stored in reservoirs. South India doesn't have water, so water from the North will be brought to the South.

Kashmir is the largest source of fresh water in the world. We have water, what we don't have is even distribution.

He still doesn't see the incoming threat. Anyway, all the best, if India and China doesn't solve this problem, the world will feel the effects.

:lol: Threat?
 
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Automation is cheaper than humans. Who wants to deal with nusiance of managing humans ?

Bro, automation isn't cheaper than humans. Or you can say automation is cheaper when all the humans that are left have degrees and double degrees.

Automation is very expensive. And China is not even the top 10 in automation. China is hoping to reach top 10 by 2020. It's at the 28th position today.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-robots-forecast-idUSKCN102104

What this means is there are plenty of countries that are way ahead of China and don't dominate the global market. China dominates the global export market through manual labour.

China's labour is getting more expensive, so in some fields automation makes sense, but that doesn't mean it will be cheaper than goods being made manually elsewhere.

For a country like India, the market will remain protected for a very long time. In fact automation is a huge advantage for India. Two reasons:

1. The Chinese and Indians will be competing at the same level for the global market because the price and quality made by the same class of machine will be the same. The only difference will be taxes and input costs. So the quality of labour has disappeared.

2. The domestic market will still get cheap products through manual labour. The quality will be lower than the products made by automation, but it will be much cheaper and will service a different market.

So some of the biggest companies will compete globally using automation while smaller companies will produce products at a smaller scale in order to service the domestic market.

Managing humans is all about being cost competitive. And India's labour cost competitiveness is still very good and will be valued much higher than automation will be. The labour cost factor will only erode over many decades, it won't be sudden.
 
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Export to which countries ?? Everyone is clamping down

The guy I replied to said they need labour, to which I said we will export.

Anyway, the current situation is temporary. All developed countries are short on labour. Once they get out of the rut, they will require labour again. Even China and Japan are going to open up.
 
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The guy I replied to said they need labour, to which I said we will export.

Anyway, the current situation is temporary. All developed countries are short on labour. Once they get out of the rut, they will require labour again. Even China and Japan are going to open up.
Japan and China will never open up
The West will cut back
 
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please it is a pipe dream. allowing 200,000 Indians right to immigrate is not going to create jobs for 20 millions

You need to look at it from a much broader PoV than you are now.

We have about 7 million people graduating every year. This number will eventually double and stabilize. And with every few years, the quality of the graduates only increases. So this also increases their value outside the country.

What you are looking at is a few years from now while you should be looking at what will happen 15 years later.

You say we need to reduce population, but there is no need for that. 15 years down the line, pretty much all our people, or at least most of our people, will be able to afford graduate level education. This gives them the minimum qualification required to look for a job outside the country.

So our main aim isn't to create jobs only in India, but to get other countries to open up their markets to Indian labour. And this is a primary agenda for India when negotiating trade deals. We are asking for free movement of high skilled labour in Europe, US and RCEP.

RCEP:
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/oY...on-modalities-for-movement-of-skilled-wo.html
“Earlier, other members were not even ready to discuss services. Now they have agreed to include a separate chapter on Mode 4 services (movement of natural persons) in the agreement,” a commerce ministry official said, requesting anonymity.

When it comes to countries like China, we are okay with opening up our market to Chinese goods if they open up their market to Indian services, including movement of people.

EU FTA
https://thewire.in/26540/many-issue...u-agreeing-on-an-free-trade-deal-in-brussels/
Mode 4 covers temporary movement of natural persons. Liberalisation under mode 4 would mean the EU allowing more Indian professionals preferential access to the European labour market, which could boost remittances from the EU to India.

So opening up our economy would also mean other countries will have to open up their economies for Indian labour.

We are also trying to get WTO to reform.
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/it...-the-stage-for-a-clash-with-US-EU-at-WTO.html

The argument is if companies like Google and Ford want to sell in India, then the US should allow access to Indians in the US.

Our population is our biggest advantage.
 
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