Aspects of Academic Thinking in India on Employment and Related Policies

Alternative strands of thinking have prevailed in India concerning the size and causes of unemployment, its measurement, its relation to capital, wealth and income distribution, its connection with the pattern of investment, the link between employment and the composition of consumption goods and methods of production, the inter-connection between planning, economic policy and the goal of employment promotion, the relation between the objective of poverty reduction and that of removal of unemployment, the role of mechanisation and such issues. In each five-year plan document there is invariably reference to the problem of unemployment and policy measures to alleviate it. At the same time, continuous discussions have been raging on the right sort of perspective or economic model to be adopted in dealing with the issue of unemployment. Thanks to numerous government reports and committees, the vast ocean of data supplied by the Central Statistical Organisation and the National Sample Survey and the large number of works by academic scholars, our understanding of the problems of unemployment and poverty has gained in width and depth. Indian economists have been intensely involved in the discussions of growth, poverty, unemployment and inequality and in all their interconnections. In what follows, the focus will be on employment and employment policies. I shall try to appraise some strands of thinking primarily from a macro angle in the frame of economic theory. Naturally, I shall be concerned with different hypotheses underlying the thinking, the basis for the same, their verification and their policy relevance.