[Answered] Urban employment guarantee scheme is an effective measure to address the continuing employment and inequality crisis. Do you agree? Provide reasons for your arguments.

The need for urban employment guarantee scheme is due to the growing distress among the urban poor, which has remained largely unaddressed for a long time and Covid just made it worse. The scheme is aimed at providing livelihood and social security in urban regions by increasing job opportunities and through the creation and maintenance of public assets.

How can it solve the problem of continuing employment and inequality crisis?

• As per the Periodic Labour Force Surveys, Inequality is on the rise. The bottom 50 percent of the population holds only 22 percent of the income.
• Inequality is also increasing in access to health and education facilities.
• Urban informal workers including women, have limited formal education, like rural areas.
• Absence of a labour-intensive manufacturing sector means lesser opportunities for low educated and low-skilled workers.
• An employment guarantee program can bring in much-needed public investment in towns to improve the quality of urban infrastructure and services, restoring urban commons, skilling urban youth and increasing the capacity of ULBs.
• This not only would provide employment during times of distress, but would also serve as a channel to push funds through quickly in periods of stress.

Issues:

• Complicated designing: The demand for work under MGNREGA tends to move in line with the agricultural cycle as it is seasonal in nature. However, in urban areas, there is no such seasonality in either work demanded or unemployment.
• Lack of Skills: Many of the migrant workers are unlikely to have the requisite skills needed for regular jobs in cities.
• Capacity constraints with the urban local bodies: Urban local bodies are poorly funded and are also much less participatory compared with the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
• Implementation issue: The identification of unemployed youth in urban area is different than rural area. There is also the question of financing such a scheme at the national level.
• It may simply encourage migration, which without the creation of the attending infrastructure, will only exerts further pressure on the crumbling facilities of these cities.

India’s job challenge is structural in nature due to the absence of a labor-intensive manufacturing sector. A more prudent approach would be to focus on boosting growth, lowering inequalities in opportunities, improving access to education and health and providing pathways for upward mobility.