Explained: India’s unique jobs crisis

There are fewer people employed in agriculture today, but the transformation has been weak. People moving out of farms are working more in construction sites and the informal economy than in factories.

India has “too many people” in agriculture and the inability to move surplus labour from farms constitutes a major policy failure of successive governments. Is that correct?

Not really. According to Amit Basole, who heads the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, the share of India’s working population engaged in farming has fallen quite significantly during the last three decades.

In 1993-94, agriculture accounted for close to 62% of the country’s employed labour force. That proportion – based on data from the National Statistical Office’s Periodic Labour Force (previously known as ‘employment and unemployment’) Surveys – dropped almost six percentage points by 2004-05 and even more (9 percentage points) over the next seven years. The declining trend continued, albeit at a slower pace, in the subsequent seven as well.

Overall, between 1993-94 and 2018-19, agriculture’s share in India’s workforce came down from 61.9% to 41.4% (see chart). In other words, roughly a third in 25 years. That isn’t insignificant. Basole estimates that given its level of per capita GDP in 2018 – and comparing with the average for other countries in the same income bracket – India’s farm sector should be employing 33-34% of the total workforce. 41.4% may not be a substantial deviation from the average.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-indias-unique-jobs-crisis-8062853/

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