12th Panel’s plan: 25 million jobs by 2017

The UPA government is looking at creating 25 million new jobs and two million additional seats in higher education in the 12th plan (2012-17) to leverage India’s demographic dividend. Chetan Chauhan reports. The road ahead | Oppn slams PM's speech | Full text of PM's speech | PM addresses the nation

Updated on: Aug 16, 2012, 13:09:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government is looking at creating 25 million new jobs and two million additional seats in higher education in the 12th plan (2012-17) to leverage India’s demographic dividend.

Creating more jobs is key to foster economic growth of 8.5 % to 9 % in 12th plan as India’s working population (15-64 age group) is expected to increase from 781 million in 2010 to 916 million in 2020. The 2011 census also stated that India has youngest population among big economies with half of country’s people being younger than 25 years in 2010 as compared to 35 years for China and 45 for United States.

Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia has set this ambitious target of 25 million new jobs outside agriculture for the 12th plan likely to be finalized by early September at a meeting charged by PM Singh.

“It (creating 25 million jobs) is not a difficult task,” said Dr TS Papola, former director of Institute for Studies in Industrial Development and member of a plan panel’s working group on employment. For that, he said, the government will have to focus on growth in service and manufacturing sectors as employment in agriculture was falling. “We have ability to create 8-10 million jobs every year”.

The plan panel believes that the key for creating new jobs would be “substantial” improvement and expansion in higher education. “We are looking at addition of two million additional seats in higher education, double of what was achieved in the 11th (2007-12) plan,” a senior panel functionary told HT, adding that there would be financial incentive for colleges and universities meet quality parameters.

The panel also wants to provide different skill training to 80 million youth in the 12th plan under the framework of the proposed National Skill Development Authority. Dilip Chenoy, managing director of National Skill Development Corporation said collaboration with private sector on training to employed and unemployed youth has started in several states including Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. “It is work in progress in five key sectors,” he said.

The 12th plan once approved by PM headed Planning Commission in September would be discussed with chief ministers at the National Development Council meeting slated for this October.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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