Improving employability a challenge for Punjab

PUNJAB’S youth are at a crossroads. Large-scale unemployment, exodus to foreign lands, vulnerability to drug abuse and involvement in agitations suggest that all is not well. The need of the hour is to provide opportunities to the youth for actively participating in development activities.

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The state government has made a good beginning by providing 26,797 jobs in a year. In February, the state had an unemployment rate of 8.2 per cent, a little higher than the national figure of 7.45 per cent.

According to sources, the state has around 25 lakh unemployed people and, hence, the generation of quality jobs on a large scale is the most challenging task. Employability of the Punjabi youth is also low. It is around 10 per cent in the case of general education and 25 per cent for technical education. Thus, improving employability should also be prioritised. Jobs offered by the agriculture, industry and service sectors are short of choices for the state’s youth.

The thrust of the state’s model of development has been on agriculture. The job profile of farm operations, however, is not as per the aspirations of the youth. The agriculture sector has produced jobs which have largely attracted migrant labourers. The state’s situation is ironical, with growth creating jobs for the migrants and joblessness for the locals. This phenomenon is also undergoing a change due to rapid mechanisation and, hence, may result in job losses even for migrants.

Barring a few, the existing industries hardly offer decent jobs to the local youth. The industrial sector is dominated by small enterprises using old technologies and employing mainly migrant workers. The service sector, though, is offering around 40 per cent jobs, but technical know-how is not modernised and, hence, the quality of jobs is compromised.

With a view to mitigating unemployment, a three-pronged strategy is suggested. The first strategy is to clear the existing backlog. The second is to prepare the youth for future jobs and the third is to bring structural changes in the economy.

At present, most of the unemployed people are matriculates, Class-XII passouts, graduates, postgraduates and diploma holders. They are qualified in the respective streams but lack skills required in the market. Job seekers consider themselves qualified, but job providers regard most of them as unfit for jobs. The gap is widening as educational institutions are following traditional approaches to designing and implementing curricula, while the landscape of the job market is changing fast owing to technological advances.

What is the way out? To clear the backlog, the government should prepare a roadmap in consultation with the industry, educational institutions, sector skill councils and financial institutions. After getting feedback from the stakeholders about skills in demand, the educational institutions should organise short-duration skill development programmes with practicum to equip the youth with the required skills. For this purpose, the institutions may set up special-purpose vehicles in the form of finishing schools having the mandate to fill the gaps in the skills the youth possess and those required in the market. For self-employment and startups, the government should provide the seed money and arrange loans from financial institutions.

In order to improve employability, the state’s Finance Minister announced two schemes in the 2023-24 Budget — Professional Coaching for Employment, and Soft Skill and Communication Training. The government also announced the Punjab Young Entrepreneur Programme to ‘incentivise business ideas’.

Preparing the youth for future jobs is a multipronged process. Our mindset is mainly trapped in the existing jobs. Enabling students for existing jobs is a good practice, but, simultaneously, we should take decisions to invest resources for future jobs. Future jobs are driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, robotics, cloud computing, smart sensors, drone technology, cybersecurity technology, blockchain technology and data science.

According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) report on the future of jobs, the top emerging jobs in the US are of big-data architects, automation technicians and engineers, renewable energy engineers, organisational development specialists, new technology specialists, IT administrators, digital transformation specialists, IT project managers and data analysts.

The universities in the state should join hands to prepare the youth for future jobs. The universities should identify ubiquitous technology-driven courses, research and innovations, depending upon their strengths. They should also restructure the existing curricula in tune with the new jobs. Institutional partnership with the industry and society should be made mandatory.

Another challenge for the state is the obsolescence of the skills of workers due to changing technologies. The WEF, in its report ‘Towards a Reskilling Revolution’, has suggested innovative methods to identify viable job transition pathways for disrupted workers. By learning from worldwide experience, the state government should incentivise the employers and educational institutions to initiate reskilling programmes for the workers to make them ready for new jobs.

Structural transformation of the economy based on the existing technology is not enough to generate quality jobs. The policymakers, like entrepreneurs, should adopt innovations in policies to build a ‘new Punjab’ in tune with technological advances. Thus, for creating future jobs in the state, the structural transformation in economy in favour of high-tech industry (Industry 4.0) and the service sector (Service 4.0), steered by digital and smart technologies, should be initiated in a planned manner.

The state’s Industrial and Business Development Policy-2022 is a step in this direction. The Education Minister, during a session on ‘Future of Work: Industry 4.0, Innovation and 21st Century Skills’, during the G20 summit, shared the state’s commitment to promote new business skills among schoolchildren. The government should extend this programme to higher education by setting up business incubators. Punjab should take advantage of the Centre’s flagship programmes like Skill India and Startup India.

Quality jobs can also be generated in the agriculture sector by promoting digital agriculture (Agriculture 4.0), covering the entire agri-food value chain by employing technologies such as remote sensing, AI, mobile phones, e-extension services, positioning technologies, e-commerce platforms and big data.