Policy Watch: Growth with Employment – March 2022

This issue of Policy Watch cuts across several of the above themes and deals with the theme Growth with Employment.

The first article is by Vijay Mahajan, Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies titled, A Strategy for Job Creation in the 2021-30 Decade. He states that the challenge of this decade is to not just grow the GDP but to create 12 crore “decent” jobs – which offer better than living wages, social security and safe working conditions. He identifies five avenues for the creation of a large number of jobs, which include (a) regenerating jal, jangal, jameen, (b) diversified agriculture and localized value added, (c) manufacturing at the level of micro and small enterprises, (d) construction of housing and infrastructure, and (e) digital and green services. He goes on to describe how the investment for this job growth can be mustered.

The second article is by RGICS Sr Research Associate, Heena Zuni Pandit. It describes the major government scheme called Production Linked Incentive (PLI), under which over Rs 240,000 crore (2.4 trillion) has been earmarked to enable domestic manufacturing units in designated sectors to upgrade their technology and undertake export quality production. It is thus supposed to help with the GDP growth, improve balance of trade and generate higher end skilled employment. The article examines the features of the scheme as applied to various sectors and then gives an overview of the progress so far and the possible way forward.

The third article is by Yuvraj Kalia, Fellow of the RGICS. He has studied the Sports Goods MSME cluster in Jalandhar, Punjab. He describes the structure of the sector using the Michael Porter Framework of competitive advantage and shows that many of the earlier units have been stagnating as they did not upgrade themselves. Others who managed to adapt to changing demand patterns and adopt suitable technology and marketing channels, have not just survived but also thrived. He also describes the role of the supportive eco system for the sector and cluster, in the form of regulatory and promotional institutions, credit providers and industry associations.