{"id":71042,"date":"2020-09-24T18:20:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T12:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=71042"},"modified":"2020-11-26T18:27:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T12:57:22","slug":"reducing-the-vulnerabilities-of-urban-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/reducing-the-vulnerabilities-of-urban-employment\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing the vulnerabilities of urban employment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><b>Source-\u00a0<\/b><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/urban-employment-as-the-focal-point\/article32604143.ece\"><strong><u><b>The Hindu<\/b><\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><b>Syllabus- GS 3-\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><b>Context-<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0The contraction of the economy raises concern on the employment situation as the shrinking sectors are those that create the maximum new jobs in India.<\/p>\n<p><strong><b>What are impacts of COVID-19 on the economy?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>GDP contraction<\/b><\/strong>\u2013 India\u2019s economy shrank nearly 25 percent in last quarter, the most drastic fall in decades.<\/li>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Public administration<\/b><\/strong>\u2013 higher government spending was in the form of transfer payments rather than spending on goods and services, which resulted in a negative growth number.<\/li>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Manufacturing and Services<\/b><\/strong>\u2013 The sector has been in the negative zone (\u201339%) across the board due to the national lockdown since end of March.<\/li>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Industries which have been hit harder<\/b><\/strong>\u2014<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Travel or Entertainment (\u201347%)<\/b><\/strong>\u2013 will still be in a gradual normalization process, and probably won\u2019t rebound completely until a vaccine is available.<\/li>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Real estate (\u201350%)<\/b><\/strong>\u2013 The present stress on home loans can hinder a revival in residential real estate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><b>What is the impact of lockdown on low-end informal jobs in India?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The pandemic and associated policy responses have exposed the severe vulnerabilities of urban low-end informal jobs; the share of vulnerable employment is higher in India as compare to the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong><b>Vulnerable employment-\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>It characterized by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine the basic rights of workers.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>GDP contraction and lack of demand in the economy, which results a significant dip in urban employment generation.<\/li>\n<li>In India, capital and labour are moving from low value-added activities in a sector to another sector, but not to higher value-added activities. This leads to a situation where a large proportion of the jobs being created is of poor quality (and is expected to remain so).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><b>What are the possible solutions in securing the livelihoods of workers in urban areas?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Generate more jobs-<\/b><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>The focus on urban employment generation programmes should be in coordination with local governments.<\/li>\n<li>A major local initiative would be to design and implement employment-intensive investment policies.<\/li>\n<li>Private investments need to be facilitated by conducive contractual relations between labour and capital.<\/li>\n<li>Small and micro enterprises, the fulcrum of industrialization, need extra support to balance the interests between labour and capital as neither have collective bargaining powers.<\/li>\n<li>Needs to launch of an urban employment scheme oriented toward building large-scale medical, health and sanitation infrastructure in cities and towns across India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>To reduce vulnerabilities by proving decent wage and some form of job security-<\/b><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>It is important that MGNREGA be expanded by both increasing the budgetary allocations and the guaranteed minimum number of days of work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><b><\/b><strong><b>Prioritize urban infrastructure-<\/b><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Infrastructure investments would spur employment, generate earnings and contribute to small enterprise formation.<\/li>\n<li>Construction of low-cost housing is another activity that can be carried out using labour-intensive methods, while yielding substantial collateral benefits for urban dwellers\u2019.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><b>Way forward-<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Given the structure of the economy and demographic profile, Government needs to focus on reducing the vulnerabilities of urban informal jobs in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source-\u00a0The Hindu Syllabus- GS 3-\u00a0Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment. Context-\u00a0The contraction of the economy raises concern on the employment situation as the shrinking sectors are those that create the maximum new jobs in India. What are impacts of COVID-19 on the economy? GDP contraction\u2013 India\u2019s economy&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/reducing-the-vulnerabilities-of-urban-employment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reducing the vulnerabilities of urban employment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230],"tags":[1303],"class_list":["post-71042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","tag-eco_8","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704696866},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}