The ambitious Digital India mission recently launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to create over five crore jobs in various sectors while facilitating skilled training to around 1 crore students, mainly for the IT sector by 2020. This likely development is forecast to open up new windows of job opportunities for professionals with a host of careers openings. Simultaneously the Central Government announced revised FDI norms that is expected to further drive jobs in India, especially in the IT sector; meanwhile India has already witnessed increased FDI inflows at US$ 55.46 billion in the financial year 2015-16 compared to US$ 36.04 billion in 2013-14 (2015-16 figures are said to be the highest ever FDI inflow for a particular financial year).

Top of it, India has been the fastest growing economy in the world in 2015-16 when much of the world including China has been seeing declining economic growth.  The jobs market too has been maintaining a steady and positive growth curve all through the year. 

Given the all-round positive outlook, some experts wonder whether India has the potential and the capability to become a SUPER EMPLOYER by the year 2020.

One of India’s premier business solutions provider, Times Business Solutions is extremely upbeat about India’s prospects. In its opinion, ‘India, with its recent radical reforms in the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regime, will become the most open economy on the global platform for FDI. The decision of liberalizing FDI policy by putting most sectors on the automatic route for foreign direct investment is going to be highly constructive in enhancing investment, income, employment and career opportunities in the country’.

However some experts dispute this possibility. They argue that when a major emerging economy and that too the world’s fastest growing economy grows significantly, it is expected that significant job growth would follow closely. Sadly this has not been the case for between 2005 and 2015, the net job growth in the economy was a little over 0.6% per year, which is much less than the growth in the working-age population that was not in school – which is estimated to have stood at a little over 1.9% per year. This means, of the 13 million potential entrants into the workforce every year during the period, only 3 million got a job.

The growing disconnect is expected to only worsen in the coming decade. Assuming India’s annual economic growth to stay around 7-8% during the same period, 2025 will see India’s GDP double and addition of well over 80 million new job seekers. But at the current rates, only 30 million net new jobs – that too, mostly informal and low-wage ones – will get created.

Looking at the two divergent viewpoints, is it truly possible for India to become super employer by 2020?

Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Wadhwani Foundation and CEO of Symphony Technology Group, believes that India certainly possess the potential to be one, but needs to act fast, implement revolutionary measures to translate the potential into reality by 2020 and above all, needs to prioritize its economic policies that link GDP growth with job growth.

He believes that six key steps must be taken to not only fill the gap of 50 million jobs in the next 10 years, especially quality jobs that pay Rs 15000 per month and more, but to also make India a super employer by 2020.

Steps That Needs To Be Acted Upon Immediately:

The six steps that must be taken to make India a super employer by 2020 include: 

• National Jobs Adviser to the PM in the PMO: Considering the vast demographic populace India has, it’s imperative that a post of National Jobs Adviser to the PM be created in the PMO. Such a adviser would initiate robust steps to align jobs growth planning with economic planning, ensure integration of multiple job-related policies across ministries at the centre and states, function as a cohesive liaison between the Government and private sector and monitor the actual outcomes and initiate quick policy corrections to ensure smooth working of the policies.

• Create A Vast, Integrated National Ecosystem: A well-integrated national ecosystem for entrepreneurship, mentoring and support must be created by the Central Government to encourage business startups and growth ideas with access to business mentors, innovation funding, angel investors and other such like sources of capital and support. A good example of such a vibrant ecosystem already exists in the form of THUB in Hyderabad which in a short span of time has worked wonders on the same path.

• Support Growth in SME’s: Policies should be tweaked and further liberalized to facilitate growth in existing Small & Medium Enterprises (SME’s) which are the growth backbone of the economy. In India, they have often been the primary drivers of job growth with nearly 70% of the growth coming from SME’s. Liberal policies and tax sops will encourage such enterprises to invest in capital equipment and be competitively productive while generating ample employment opportunities. In addition, well-defined clusters and geographical areas will enable such entities to achieve economies of scale in terms of deployment of resources as well as focus on their specific needs. Further, a vibrant SME ecosystem for high-value manufacturing will help support defence and railways in the form of attracting long-term investments.

• Labour Law Reforms: Currently the labour laws are still too archaic. They need to be revamped and fine-tuned in line with prevalent market trends so as to boost job growth. Certain labour laws like Section 10 of Labour Regulations Act lay down unnecessary rules for manufacturing sector regarding hiring of contract workforce. Such laws need to be fine-tuned so as to make the sector more open allowing for hiring of labour as the situation demands with more freedom which in turn will help fuel more job opportunities.

• Further Liberalise Ease of Business: The current Central Government has initiated several dynamic steps to ease doing business in India. But still a lot more needs to be done like for instance, initiate flexible policies to speed up the land acquisition and clearance processes. Also, tax sops to SEZs should be maintained and extended for another decade sustaining their growth momentum. The recent Government’s plan to set up a special cell that will address the issues of the business entities in 72 hours is laudable for they will project India as a favorable manufacturing destination while helping open up its economy to further investments which in turn will spawn a host of employment opportunities.

• Establish A Startup & SME Growth Corporation: Establishing a public-private partnership (PPP) model based corporation will go a long way in helping start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SME’s), especially ones outside technology sector, to grow, evolve and consolidate themselves. Help can be provided through technology and knowledge infrastructure which will spur their growth and sustain their growth momentum while generating newer jobs. Such entities can also be connected to mentors, angel investors and other key ecosystem participants.

India presently is going through an exciting phase with the economy looking good and poised for better days ahead and an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to translate its enormous demographic dividend into quality talent. But for that to happen and sustain, the Central as well as State Governments with business leaders and policy makers must capture and exploit the available opportunities. This way, they can help create tens of millions of quality job opportunities and also equip its young populace with requisite quality skills to take advantage of the opportunities that comes their way. 

If that can be achieved, India can bring about stable equitable growth and broad-based prosperity and above all, emerge as a super employer by 2020.