The nature of economic growth in India in recent times is often described as a jobless growth. Do you agree with this view? Give arguments in favour of your answer.

What the view means

• Jobless growth means employment elasticity of GDP is very low: a one per cent rise in output adds far less than one per cent extra work.
• National Sample Survey rounds showed that in the 2000s, GDP grew much faster than usual work, so the unemployment rate could look modest while underemployment stayed high.
• A large share of workers remain in agriculture, whose slice of GDP has fallen, so average farm work is overcrowded and poorly paid.
• Organised manufacturing did not absorb the surplus labour that left, or should have left, the farm.

Arguments in favour

• Growth was led by capital-intensive services and industry (information technology, telecom, petroleum, automobiles) that raise value added with few shop-floor hands.
• Labour laws, inspection fear, and exit costs pushed firms to stay small, use contract labour, or automate rather than hire on the rolls.
• Skill mismatch left millions of school leavers unready for the factory or the office that actually grew.
• Female labour-force participation stayed weak, so household income rose more from a few earners than from a broad job boom.
• The Make in India diagnosis in 2014 itself admitted a thin manufacturing jobs base.

Qualification

• Construction, trade, transport and self-employment did add work, much of it informal and without social security.
• Rural non-farm work and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act days are a safety net, not the same as industrial jobs.
• The honest answer is therefore yes, in quality and in organised hiring, not a claim that employment was literally zero.
• Job-rich growth needs labour-intensive manufacturing, skilling, easier formal hiring, and a shift of workers into higher-productivity sectors with rights.