With economies across the world slowly coming out of Covid-enforced disruptions, people looking for gainful employment in India are also returning to the job market in ever-increasing numbers. India’s workforce is second only to China, with 41.19 per cent of them engaged in agriculture and related activities, 26.18 per cent in industry, and 32.33 per cent in the service sector. Sadly, women workers’ participation has gone down from 26 per cent to 19 per cent in the decade starting from 2010, the World Bank data indicates. What is more worrying is the latest estimate that women’s employment in India has plummeted to 9 per cent in the last two years due to the pandemic.
The strength of the labour force increased to 43.72 crore from 42.84 crore in March. Given the humongous workforce in India, the powers-that-be need to focus on job creation continuously and special emphasis has to be given to job creation for women, who can feel emancipated in the socio-political sphere only through economic empowerment. This can, in turn, be facilitated by skilling or upskilling the women workforce available or likely to enter the job market, through various initiatives of the government.
Story in numbers
The International Labor Organisation (ILO) says that 81.8 per cent of the women workforce in India is employed in the informal economy. Three out of four women in our country are not engaged in any recognised economic activity. An estimated 7.5 crore women are expected to join the workforce in the coming decade. So, in order to ensure that an important human resource — nearly half of the workforce in the country — does not go to waste and is tapped to give at least a 25 per cent fillip to the national economy, the government needs to focus on skill development for their empowerment.
Union minister of state Jitendra Singh recently informed Parliament that the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes, which were announced in the 2021-22 Union Budget with an outlay of Rs 1.97 lakh crore for a period of five years, hold the potential to create 60 lakh new jobs. Over 7.22 lakh jobs have been given in the ministries or departments of the central government since 2014. Since only 38,850 new jobs were given in 2021-22, the government’s efforts leave much to be desired.
Needless to say, authorities will do well to follow in letter and spirit. The government has to work hard to ensure that women entering the job market are imparted skills necessary for successful completion of assigned tasks or their existing skills are further honed to enable them to climb up the socio-economic ladder.
It would not be out of place to mention here that the government needs to focus on women under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) to facilitate self-employment among would-be entrepreneurs. Under the scheme that envisages collateral-free loans up to Rs 10 lakh to micro or small business enterprises and individuals to set up or expand business activities, women could benefit from more relaxed norms in order to rope in maximum beneficiaries.
A streamlined institutional mechanism in the form of the National Skill Development Mission launched in July 2015 under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) to ensure the convergence of skill training activities across sectors and states — with added focus on job-creation and skilling of women for their empowerment — will certainly help redress the situation vis-à-vis job-creation and skilling and upskilling of women, which is presently skewed against the fair sex.
Since the MSDE oversees the coordination of all skill development efforts across the country and the removal of the disconnect between demand and supply of skilled manpower, it needs to rope in other related ministries and government agencies in building vocational and technical training frameworks, skill upgradation, and innovative thinking among the women workforce.
The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra (PMKK), model training centres for skill development, envisages being set up in every district under the ‘Skill India Mission’ by the MSDE. These centres need to be strengthened and their operational weaknesses must be removed or redressed. The PMKK endeavours to run industry-driven courses of high quality with a focus on employability and the creation of aspirational value for skill development training.
The government’s efforts wouldn’t fructify if the private sector does not take more women-specific initiatives and increase its spending under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for their upskilling. A report published by the United Nations Development Programme in India — Corporate Engagement in Women’s Economic Empowerment — in 2019 found that the top 100 firms’ CSR expenditure on women’s empowerment was just 4 per cent of the total spend of Rs 6,314.30 crore.
Way forward
Post-Covid restrictions, several business groups seem to be working more in this direction. For instance, software companies Microsoft and Google have joined hands with several state governments to help women gain industry skills in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital marketing, etc, so that they can benefit from Digital India and Skill India initiatives. The two-way partnership is the only way forward to build capacities of women, especially from the marginalised sections and rural areas to ensure their equal participation in the workforce, which, as per the International Monetary Fund, will increase India’s GDP by 27 per cent.
The writer is co-founder and MD, Orane International, training partner with National Skill Development Corporation(NSDC), Network Member, India International Skills Centres, an initiative of GoI. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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