To create more jobs, India needs an eco-system that encourages more and more mid-level enterprises (employing about 100-300 persons), Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said here on Thursday.
“We need to look at what in our policy is preventing industry from getting into the middle level,” he said at a FICCI-Institute of Applied Manpower Research event on employment generation.
Commenting on the decline in the labour participation rate in India, Ahluwalia said India’s employment story was a ‘curious mix’ as the picture at the bottom of the spectrum was not as bad as made out to be, referring to the rural job scheme and the construction boom. What, however, was worrying was that the employment story at the middle level was not so good, he said, adding that India needed more jobs and better quality ones.
“Organised labour is ridiculously low in India compared with the global average. This must rise,” he said, adding that India needed to look at why thousands of micro and small enterprises were not growing into the middle level.
He underlined the need to skill educated but jobless youth, but said first there is need for a clear definition of ‘skills’. The mere upgrading of ITIs would not do, the private sector needs to play a bigger role in skill development, he said.
On the ongoing two-day strike by trade unions, Ahluwalia said there was a downturn in the industrial cycle and once industrial output bounced back, a lot of problems that were being raised could be ironed out.