The Congress government in Karnataka completes 27 months marred by constant criticism and multiple power centers dragging the party and government in different directions. Lack of strong narrative beyond the tag of Guarantee Sarkara is damaging Congress's ability to counter even the weakest opposition effectively.
As a progressive state Karnataka government has to do a lot more to address the persisting employment issues and the increasing gender gap. Even as Karnataka continues to be one of the largest contributors to the GST and has the highest per capita income in the country, some key question on inclusiveness has to be raised, not in comparison with other states but how it can lead change:
- what is the per capita income excluding Bengaluru
- what
is the per capita income excluding the top 5% of the wealthiest
- what is the per capita income of women
These three critical questions can help in re-strategizing Karnataka’s development programs with a class, gender and region lens.
Unemployment vs Employment:
Competitive land acquisitions offered to attract industries without assessing the actual level of employment the industries are going to provide for the local population is leading to massive migrated workforce from other states. With increase in the education levels in Karnataka and in most southern states there are less takers for the low-end factory jobs, and this mismatch is also contributing to the decline in Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR). With young people choosing higher studies over low-level jobs, the question arises on what the government is doing to meet the growing job demands of aspiring more educated and qualified youth.
Unfortunately, Karnataka unlike Tamil Nadu has been Bengaluru focused and has constantly failed in creating multiple functional industrial zones across the state, thereby forcing people to migrate to Bengaluru, which is only getting less attractive as the wages are actually determined by the migrated job seekers from other states.
Skill Development & Labour Reforms:
Moving away Skill Development from Labour Department for power balancing has been a huge strategic mistake. Yuva Nidhi one of the guarantee schemes, that could have been more impactful if unemployed youth were connected to the industry as paid interns to learn the necessary skills, with Labour Department & Skill Development Corporation monitoring the progress, instead its a direct transfer of the scheme amount without adding any learning value to the youth in the process. What could have been a massive employment engagement program with the industry has just ended up as payment to stay unemployed.
Union government constantly tweaking the labour laws and relaxing the provision in favor of the industry will lead to higher employment in the informal sector, the decline in the labour participation in agriculture has not moved the needle to increase employment in the formal sector either.
With some initiatives by the State Labour Department for unorganized sector to provide medical and accident insurance cover, the concern over how to address a social security as people in unorganized sector become older remains a major challenged that is not even part of any discussions today.
Poverty in India is an intersection of caste, gender, region, education and also wages, a robust policy of Employment Linked Incentives (ELI) for hiring women, OBC, SC & ST community youth, in addition to the proposed increase minimum wages by the Labour Department, and ELI has to be implemented to improve inclusion of caste and gender without diluting the objective and shredding tokenism.
Governments have been the biggest defaulter of labour policy related to contract employees, and Guarantee Sarkara has an opportunity to re-look at its own contract labour policy including Asha and NHRM workers and implement a lucrative social security policy and stop terminating them after years of service in the same role and then remove them with empty hands.
Gender Justice:
Unpaid care & domestic work has been a major concern when gender equality is assessed, while most work done by men is considered productive and paid, how to compute the value of unpaid care & domestic work done by women remains unanswered. According to UN women’s unpaid care & domestic work accounts upto 39% of the GDP, and in India the 2023 SBI report pegged it at 7.5% of GDP, which translates to Rs 22.7 lakh crore.
Karnataka’s successfully implemented gruhalakshmi scheme has an opportunity to convert the scheme as wages for the unpaid care & domestic work done by women in the household extending it to all women above 22 years, thereby economically recognizing the unpaid care & domestic work women are engaged in. This revolutionary step can change the way women participation is seen in the economy of the state.
Governments by and large have linked most of the welfare programs to improve economic conditions of households, which have not necessarily resulted in improving the condition of women, but targeted intervention programs for women in health, education and nutrition and MGNREGA schemes have been effective comparatively.
Women were largely involved in agriculture labour, the steady decline is due to increase of mechanization in agricultural sector and increase in education levels, hence government is duty bound to address the decline in women LFPR and implement policies to connect women to formal employment. Free bus service under the Shakti scheme has been a huge hit, with over 5000 million rides by women, and if women are traveling to work has the LFPR increased remains an unanswered question. With industries mostly centered around Bengaluru providing working women hostels for age group of 18 to 25 years in and around the industrial townships, similar to the initiative by Tamil Nadu, helping them migrate with secured accommodation will push the LFPR and increase participation of women in the formal employment.
Karnataka needs to move from being gender sensitive towards gender transformative by strategically investing in women through transparent gender budgeting and also increasing women workforce to 33% and eventually to 50% in the government jobs itself as a progressive and gender equity focused state.
Kavitha Reddy, Trustee Kaagaz Foundation