Takshashila Discussion Document - Addressing the Jobs Crisis

Economic Policy
Written By Aditya Ramanathan

Executive Summary

1.     18 million Indians turn 18 years of age every single year and India has over a 100 million people by some estimates who are surplus in agriculture. Unless India creates 20 million jobs each year starting soon, this could spiral into a huge humanitarian crisis.

2.     To create 20 million jobs every year, India needs to have a GDP growth of at least 10% and an employment elasticity of over 0.4.

3.     We propose the following ideas and recommendations for creating 20 million jobs every year.

a.     Career impact bonds to finance upskilling

b.     Creating new cities

c.     Facilitating emigration

d.     Increasing women’s labour force participation rate

e.     Improving access to credit

f.      Facilitating the gig economy

g.     Besides these, tackling structural issues like improvements to infrastructure, rationalising labour laws, and creating modern insolvency laws.

Authors

Featured
Sridhar Krishna
Sridhar Krishna

Sridhar Krishna is a Senior Scholar at the Takshashila Institution where he led the 20 million jobs project before joining the group researching on AI Governance. He graduated from BITS, Pilani and has an MBA from SP Jain, Mumbai. He also works with ambitious young IT firms helping them scale and with a civil society organisation on judicial reform. Till recently, he was a Managing Director at Accenture where he worked on analytics and AI.

Aarushi Kataria
Aarushi Kataria

Aarushi Kataria was a Junior Research Scholar at the Takshashila Institution and contributed to the 20 Million Jobs project. She graduated from the Ashoka University in economics and political science. Her research interests lie at the intersection of politics and economics.

Aditya Ramanathan
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