Measures to Reduce Unemployment

Reducing unemployment in India requires policies aimed at the specific causes identified earlier, rather than a single blanket remedy. The broad categories of measures studied in this chapter are:

Employment-generation programmes

• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 — legally guarantees at least 100 days of wage employment per year to every rural household willing to do unskilled manual work, directly targeting rural and seasonal unemployment.
• Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) — provides financial assistance/subsidy to set up new micro-enterprises, encouraging self-employment among youth and traditional artisans.
• Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) — promotes self-help groups and rural livelihood diversification, implemented in Gujarat through the state's own rural livelihoods mission structures.

Skill development and education

• Skill India Mission / Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana — trains youth in industry-relevant vocational skills, directly targeting the skills mismatch that causes structural unemployment.
• Expansion of technical and vocational education alongside general education, so that graduates' skills better match what employers in Gujarat's industrial base — textiles, chemicals, engineering and diamond-processing among them — and the wider Indian economy actually need.

Encouraging labour-intensive growth and self-employment

• Start-up India and Make in India — aim to encourage new enterprise creation and expand manufacturing employment.
• Promotion of small-scale and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which tend to be more labour-intensive per unit of output than large capital-intensive industry, so they generate more jobs for a given amount of investment.

Structural and long-term measures

• Diversifying the agricultural economy — encouraging allied activities (dairy, horticulture, agro-processing) alongside crop farming so that agricultural and rural workers have income-earning options during the off-season, reducing seasonal and disguised unemployment.
• Population and family-planning measures — moderating the rate of labour-force growth so that job creation can keep pace with new entrants. …