It’s time we rejected biased and unsubstantiated reports about rising unemployment and difficult times for India’s youth
Opposition leaders seek to draw attention to rising unemployment, among other issues, on the steps of the Vidhan Bhavan, in Mumbai, on March 21. File pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
I was appalled to read a recent report about how India’s economic growth is not enough to accommodate the millions of young people who join the workforce each year. How could this be, I wondered, given that LinkedIn.com appeared to be bursting at the seams with job listings? What shocked me even more about the report in question was the suggestion that many of our educated youth are now being forced to become scammers because of an inability to find jobs that pay them a decent wage.
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First of all, I have to point out that scammers do not exist in India. We don’t even know what scams mean because of how honest and God-fearing we are. It is part of our culture. If these so-called scammers do exist, they are obviously foreigners masquerading as Indians to give us a bad reputation. The world has long recognised us as kind, peace-loving, sincere people who would never do anything illegal for something as crude and unimportant as money. Throughout history, ‘Indians and honesty’ have gone together like ‘bread and butter’, the one complimenting the other. It’s why we also have the world’s cleanest politicians representing us, none of whom have ever broken the law.
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Secondly, I find it strange that unemployment exists at all, let alone that it is rising and threatening to cause chaos. The report went on to claim that youth are being forced to embrace the gig economy and accept low-paid jobs because there are no options available to them. This was clearly another lie. I have not run into any unemployed person since 2014 or so, which is why I suspected the veracity of those claims the minute I read about them. Yes, there may be a few thousand people begging for jobs on social media platforms, but who is to say they are real human beings and not bots? If unemployment really was an issue, wouldn’t the government or our many diligent news outlets have said something about it by now? Wouldn’t we have known about this crisis?
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that young people really are struggling to find jobs that pay them well enough. Even if that were true, would there really be anything wrong with delivery jobs or online gigs that pay by the hour? Didn’t our parents and grandparents manage to do great things on very little income? Did they complain? Why should today’s youth have any worries about the future when so many older Indians have already declared that life has never been better for anyone living in this country?
There was one other thing that stood out in the report: a mention of the low labour force participation of women. I looked around my own place of work and saw at least two women in the building, instantly proving how wrong that aspect was too. In fact, I am pretty sure there are more women working today than ever before, and any statistics that disprove this are flawed and need to be rejected outright.
Maybe the fault lies with the government, for not speaking out. Maybe it needs to issue more guidelines about what young Indians can do after they graduate, to stop rumours of unemployment from gaining traction. Our honourable Prime Minister has already attempted to address this. A few years ago, he rightly wondered if a person earning R200 at the end of the day by selling pakodas should be considered employed. I don’t see why the government doesn’t come up with more such helpful suggestions for the millions of students set to graduate in the coming months. Maybe it should create another fund like the wildly successful PM Cares and divert a solid five per cent of any money raised towards advertising campaigns highlighting non-traditional job opportunities.
I believe it is our duty as patriots to reject unfounded rumours about difficult times for India’s youth. There are more opportunities than our young people know what to do with, if they only take the time to think about them. All they need to remind themselves is that they live in a country where one doesn’t need intelligence, education, morality, or even a conscience to achieve something. If faced with a lack of job offers, all one needs to do is join the right political party and choose to support the right side. If they can do that, the world will be their oyster. Who knows, one of them may even be Prime Minister someday.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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