The last quarterly survey by the Labour Bureau showed that India has never created so few jobs, since the survey started in 2009, as in 2015: Only 1.35 lakh jobs compared to more than nine lakh in 2011 and 4.19 lakh in 2013 in eight labour-intensive industries (the only ones that are surveyed).
These figures are particularly alarming since almost one million new people enter the job market every month. As President Pranab Mukherjee said last month, “The Indian economy today needs to generate 115 million non-farm jobs over the next decade to gainfully employ its workforce and reap its demographic dividend.” That is not the direction in which India is going.
In fact, the Economic Survey last year showed that during the last decade (2001-11), the growth rate of the labour force (2.23 per cent) was significantly higher than the growth rate of employment (1.4 per cent), which itself was several-fold less than the growth rate of the economy. According to Census 2011, the average growth rate of the economy was 7.7 per cent per annum, when it was only 1.8 per cent for employment.
This jobless growth, which has been more dramatic in the last two years, is probably the main issue of the Indian economy today.
It is largely responsible for demonstrations by young Patels of Gujarat and Jats of Haryana in the name of reservations. Since they can’t get jobs in the private sector, they fall back on government jobs.
But the public sector is shrinking: Government jobs, which were 19.5 million in 1996-97, are about 17 million today. Not only are jobs fewer than before but those that are created are precarious and badly paid because of the informalisation of the economy. In fact, the share of registered manufacturing in employment peaked in 1984.
Jobless growth may be explained in many different ways, but two factors in particular need to be highlighted.
First, India has an employability problem. While the services can rather easily recruit skilled white-collar workers (IT engineers, English-speaking people for the call centres, etc), the industry cannot transform peasants into factory workers so quickly. Such a transition requires basic training, which is missing.
The 2015 Economic Survey assessed that “6.8 per cent persons aged 15 years and above are reported to have received/ be receiving vocational training”. These data reflect a larger problem: Primary and secondary education, where the dropout rate remains very high, provides a poor education.
In this context, the minuscule increase in the share of education in the 2015-16 budget, from 3 to 3.1 per cent, will hardly make any significant difference.
The fact that the government seems to rely on private initiatives in this domain also stands in stark contrast to an obvious reality: No country has developed without a robust public education system.
The second factor that needs to be pointed out pertains to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Their labour intensity is four times higher than that of large firms. The multinationals are particularly capitalistic, as evident from the commitments/ promises expressed during the last “Make in India Week” in February.
While the investment commitments were impressive at $225 billion over five years, the fact that they would translate into the creation of 6 million jobs only was not trumpeted. In fact, the Make in India programme is revealing of the jobless growth syndrome: Highly capitalistic multinationals will start factories in India to sell their products to the white-collar middle class but will not create the manufacturing workforce the country is longing for.
SMEs, which employ 40 per cent of the workforce of the country and which represent about 45 per cent of India’s manufacturing output and 40 per cent of India’s total exports, are in a better position to do so — but they are not treated well.
First, Issues in SME financing approximately 95 per cent of units still require to be brought into banking fold”. As a result, they get a small share of the net credit of India’s domestic banks, whereas these banks are mandated to register at least 20 per cent year-to-year growth in credit to micro and small enterprises. Instead of increasing their loans to SMEs, public banks are asked to lend money to big companies.
Second, the SMEs are badly affected by the erosion of state protections which harked back to the earlier days of independence.
Moreover ,the growth is led by consumption and lack of enough investment in enhancing human capital along with lack of turn around of industrial sector are seen as the obstacle to reap the demographic dividend of India.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.