Prof Bhaskar elucidates that India’s economy thrives on manpower, yet mismatches and institutional rigidity hinder optimal utilisation, demanding innovative solutions for sustainable growth, exclusively for Different Truths.
An economy moves forward based on its manpower. One simple meaning of manpower is the potential demographic capacity – the size of the population in the working age; the other is realised manpower in the domains of production and activities linked with it. I follow the classical political economy frame, where the analysis is production-centred.
Once the issue comes to the uses and misuses of manpower in an economy, the issue also comes to facilitating manpower. This is because no economy sits idle – if one section is non-used, the other section must be used to carry on the flow of output. The question then comes on optimality in the use of manpower, capacity understood and utilised and so on.
General Involuntary Misuse
The crowding of manpower on land is itself a reflection of manpower non-used in India – a section of this manpower could have been withdrawn in favour of non-agricultural activities. By no means is this an argument against agriculture – it is easing the lives of people engaged in agriculture. Post-2005, some have started working under MNREGA as barefoot workers with a territorial upper limit confined to a five-km radius from the place of residence of the potential worker, which has not so far been able to stop migration from rural areas under distress. No doubt, MNREGA is designed to show the way for sustainability in rural livelihood by worker-made production of labour-employing assets – the present generation making provision for future generations. The success of this is still in doubt, though the coverage of MNREGA has become pan-India, as observed.
Understanding Education-led Jobs
Some examples here may help, as observed. In the Silchar town in undivided Assam in early 1966, a bright student of sixth standard left school, what is today termed as ‘drop out’, to be engaged in cultivation for his family had no capacity to support his education or more so, the family needed his manual power more than his budding brainpower. In the city of Patna, a school pass-out boy sat idle at home because the illusion of education obstructed him from getting engaged in manual work, while his illiterate younger brother continued earning as a rag picker, which was more acceptable to his parents. This was in 2013. Episodes are non-identical but similar over half a century at regions distanced by miles.
Institutional Fixation or Rigidity
Most of the institutions that claim autonomy are dependent on non-plan expenditure, mainly for the salaries of personnel per year. The Government of India is the custodian or the fiscal authority that determines, reveals or not, who will be the academic administrator, the CEO in public enterprises and designations by whatever name. Apart from present dependence, the future of these high-quality persons, as state-perceived, is also dependent, so that the whole process of appointment of employees above some level in the hierarchy remains government-dependent. The fixation at the level of the institution, thus, is functional fixation by the government or the core state. The direct implication is often the non-inclusion of the person with a voice or difference.
Polity and Poor Performance
The role of polity in the engagement of manpower more often leads to poor engagement because the criteria remain anti-quality, like ‘loyalty first’. The disaster comes when the competent candidate is branded as a communist or at least a person with sympathy for the Left, or at the minimum a voice of the poor and the marginalised. The chance of inclusion in mainstream or in the given system inversely varies with the Left ideology of the person, unless it is a Government of the Left.
Disguised Non-Uses of Manpower
The problem is not with the elite-academicians who do not care much for education and jobs in the homeland and often prefer to be educated in advanced institutions in advanced countries. This section is the disguised non-use of manpower. The other section that does not matter much for the decision-makers is the illiterate and semi-literate workers who remain disguised employed or disguised unemployed. This section adds to the wealth of the land but remains a consequence of the wealth generated. What remains is the patriot-educated section that does not decide to settle abroad, and tragically, many of these sections are not put in the right chair. Of course, the onus rests on the institutions or government as the super-institution.
Mismatch in Potential and Utilisation
Mismatch between aptitude and actual engagement in either formal education or in a job is rampant in India’s institutions. For example, a student revealed competence in Bengali literature at the school level, and he is forced to study Accountancy, probably for better job opportunities. After some years, he is engaged as an Accounts Assistant, where he performs much less than would have been expected because he was more self-engaged in reading and writing poems and novels. There is no conflict between learning Accountancy and Bengali literature, of course – the conflict comes because of the fixed institutional labour-hour. This example should not be taken as hypothetical – the author observed it in minute detail at Allahabad in a premier social science research institute, as such cases may be observed elsewhere.
Capacity Utilisation
Understanding work-specific capacity is a difficult proposition, but based on precedence or past performance, one individual may very much be useful to get engaged as a paid worker beyond the age limit fixed by institutional rigidity. A false debate may arise when there is a queue of unemployed workers. Capacity creation in the workspace thus seems a binding responsibility, institutionally speaking – the point is to engage both types rather than mourning on the possibility of unemployment if the creation of wealth of the nation is the objective.
It may be a pathetic nation if the youth standing in the queue did Master’s in universities and waiting to be engaged as sweepers – no work is to be looked down upon – the problem remains in India’s tradition that once seen sweeping in public places, they may not be acceptable as teachers in educational institutions. This was observed when some MNREGA-employable youth opined a decade back in the Heartland that once soil is taken on the head after digging it, they will miss the opportunity to be teachers (‘Saab, ekbar sirpar mitti utta lu to kobhi teacher nehi ban paunga’)
Any Cause?
For some consequences, there must be some cause. In India’s post-British education system, it was basically a transformation of potential labour into ‘babus’ to deal with accounts and serve the British order. Post-British, industrialism appeared, but the unlimited supply of manpower outpaced the manpower requirements, and the land-man ratio remained adverse since post-1947 or particularly post-partition. The spread of vocational institutions and competent technologists was still a far cry from what could have built the economy. This was despite the setting up of IITs on the one hand and public enterprises on the other.
Consequences
It is for sure that education was not irrelevant in India, notwithstanding the existence of a large section of the population that carried an unscientific outlook in society. Once the term manpower comes, it is beyond the social frontier – it is economy-determined. Any economy needs a man educated and trained to be a power or ‘manpower’. India has no dearth of manpower – the question remains about their appropriate uses.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
By
By