The Hindu Business Line : President plain speak

THERE IS LITTLE doubt that the President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, spoke from considerable personal knowledge when he said that brows of the country's youth are increasingly lined with worry as the spectre of unemployment stares them in their face. After all, his penchant for interacting with school and college students has become legendary. But even without the benefit of such an intuitive understanding, it is easy to see that the situation has assumed crisis proportions from the welter of empirical evidence that is available to anyone who cares to look for it. The sluggish offtake of foodgrains from the public distribution system, the poor demand for essential fast-moving consumer goods items and the scientific surveys by the National Sample Survey Organisation of household consumption data, all afford ample evidence of financial distress stemming from a lack of income-generating opportunities for vast sections.

Official data, which put the number of unemployed at 36 million, is a gross understatement as it ignores those engaged in activity that offer wages below the subsistence level. A peanut vendor on the beachfront or someone selling lottery tickets on the streets may be officially described as `gainfully engaged' and thus outside the pale of unemployment statistics. But it would be a folly to regard it as providing them and their dependents a subsistence level of income. In the event, the President has done well to top up the official statistics with another 40 million, which perhaps as a concession to official sensibilities, he has described as the number needing `value-added employment'.

The schemes of employment generation that he has suggested such as bio-fuel generation or reclamation of parcels of wasteland or giving a thrust to bamboo cultivation for improving the economic prospects of the North-East have a conceptual appeal. But a lot of ground has to be covered in translating these into reality. The logistics involved in converting an automotive industry relying on non-renewable fossil fuel into those running on bio-fuel poses an enormous challenge. Similarly, creating worthwhile economic application for the vast amount of bamboo that may be cultivated and brought to the market is not going to be easy. This is where the mind-set of the ruling political class becomes relevant. Accustomed as it is to seeing public investment programmes through the prism of private profit, it is difficult to imagine this section fired by these ideas. Unfortunately, unless this class shares the President's vision and has the conviction to see it through its teething troubles, these ideas are doomed to remain on paper. The average Indian's tendency to see his plight as something that is divinely ordained gives the rulers the excuse for inaction. It would be a folly to assume that the citizen's future behaviour would continue to be so philosophical. There may no republic left for the politicians to lord over when he begins to think otherwise.

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