Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana), Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh lead Indian states on the quality and quantity of jobs they provide to their people, while Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh (UP) are last, the index reveals.

“Good quality productive jobs that offer good wages are an impetus for sustainable economic growth,” Sabina Dewan, president and executive director at research organisation JustJobs Network, said at the launch of A Just Jobs Index for India, on June 21, 2019. 

Supported by Azim Premji University in partnership with the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, the Index tracks the performance of states by employment, formality, benefits, income equality, and gender equality, based on a set of equally weighted indicators.

Despite economic growth, the pace of job creation has been slow, the report said. The country faces rising unemployment with 71% of workers employed in the informal sector, and inconsistent job creation across states.

India’s unemployment rate was 6.1%–rural (5.3%) and urban (7.8%)–in 2017-18, according to the government’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), released on May 31, 2019.

Gujarat, which has “consistently maintained” net state value-added (NSVA) growth rates of 10% or higher during the period 2012-13 to 2016-17, did not do as well in creating quality jobs, ranking 18 on the index.

Source: JustJobs Index, 2019
Note: Data for Andhra Pradesh are pre-bifurcation, and include those for Telangana.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana lead the pack, as we said, with 57.3 points, followed by Maharashtra (57.2) and Chhattisgarh (56.39), while UP (32.04) is below Bihar (37.28) and Odisha (37.70) at the bottom of the list.

For each indicator, the index uses a mean of the available values for the period 2010-2018, using data from various government sources, such as surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office, the Labour Bureau, the Annual Survey of Industries, the Reserve Bank of India and the PLFS.

The Index does not take into consideration the seven northeastern states due to small sample sizes in the available data.

“Demand-side” dimensions–such as employment, formality, benefits, income equality and gender equality–were selected, since they evaluate the quality and quantity of jobs, and “supply-side” indicators, such as education and skill levels, were not, authors Dewan and Divya Prakash, a research associate at JustJobs Network, wrote in the report.

Gender equality delivers a better overall score

While India’s female labour force participation rate is 24%, ranked 120 among 131 countries in 2018 by the World Bank, the jobs index found that states that did better on gender equality are associated with a better overall score.

Himachal Pradesh (72.9) topped on gender equality, while Bihar (13.5) ranked at the bottom.

To address the issue of gender disparity in employment, states with low female workforce participation should make public spaces, housing and workplaces safer for women, and women should migrate to cities if they needed to, Dilip Chenoy, secretary general, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, said at the launch of the report. 

Chhattisgarh (95.29) performed the best on the employment dimension owing to its high labour force participation rate. Goa scored (15.88) the least due to high youth unemployment (28.7% in 2018). 

A state with a larger share of workers with a written contract was ranked higher on the part of the index that measured the proportion of formal jobs. Goa (87.59) topped the index on this score; Uttar Pradesh (16.92) brought up the bottom.

States with higher benefits and safeguards to workers, such as union association, higher expenditure on pension as part of gross state domestic product and a higher share of workers with pension/provident funds, also ranked higher.

Jammu and Kashmir (55.47), Delhi (52.47) and Kerala (51.99) topped on the benefits dimension, which the authors attributed to relatively high state expenditures on pensions and union participation. Rajasthan (17.19), Chhattisgarh (14.14) and Gujarat (12.67) were at the bottom due to low union participation.

For income inequality, the index considers a higher ratio of minimum wages to average wages, a low Gini coefficient–an indicator of inequality–of consumption, and a high ratio of informal wages to formal wages. Chhattisgarh (83.03), Maharashtra (76.84) and Uttarakhand (73.39) were at the top here, while Uttar Pradesh (39.45), Jammu & Kashmir (36.24) and Kerala (36.24) stood at the bottom.

Lack of real-time data and indicators: authors 

The authors of the report note the lack of real-time data about India’s labour markets, and the lack of better indicators, which led to gross domestic product and Ease of Doing Business rankings–in which India stood at 77 among 190 countries–to be substituted as indicators for job creation.

“The Index, which is being put in the public domain, would hold state governments accountable and push them to provide more productive jobs and enhance opportunities for the youth,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, the government’s think tank.

Kant suggested the revitalisation of education for skill development, with a focus on “skills for the future”–digital literacy with a focus on hands-on training and mobile-based training for people in remote areas. This will help youth in rural areas become job creators rather than job seekers, he said.

(Sharma, a second-year MSc student at the Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune, is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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By recognising that “an adult human being having mental capacity to take an informed decision has right to refuse medical treatment including withdrawal from life-saving devices”, the court enabled Indians to create an advance medical directive, or a living will, containing a person’s wishes regarding their end-of-life medical treatment should they lose their capacity to take decisions or convey their wishes.

A year after the judgement, a survey of more than 2,400 urban Indian respondents has found that while 88% of respondents wanted to decide their line of medical treatment during the last days of their life, only 27% were aware of the concept of a living will and only 6% of these had actually created a living will.

The Living Wiell Survey was conducted by healthcare service provider HealthCare at HOME (HCAH) across seven cities–Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Jaipur–with a sample size of 350 to 400 per region. There were an equal number of male and female respondents, who had been hospitalised for more than a day in the past year.

About 85% of the respondents said they wished to cause the least mental and financial trouble to their family during their last days, the survey found. Yet, 74% of respondents had never given any serious thought to dying and had not secured their family financially in case of their death, while 26% of respondents had.

Of the four age cohorts that the respondents were equally divided–25-35 years, 36-50 years, 51-60 years and 60+ years–senior citizens (60+) had the highest percentage (94%) of people wishing to cause the least trouble to their family members during their last days. Yet, only 80% of people in this age group–the least amongst all age groups–wanted to decide their treatment line during the last days of their life. In the age group of 25-35 years, 97% of respondents wanted independence of choice of treatment line, the highest among all age groups.

In the 25-35 years age group, 36% of respondents were aware of the concept of a living will, with this age group showing the maximum awareness. Only 21% people in the age group of 51-60 years knew about living wills, making this group the least aware.

Among respondents who were aware of living wills, 17% of those aged 60+ had a living will, while less than 1% in the age group of 36-50 years and none in the age group 25-35 years had one.

Source: The Living Wiell Survey, 2019

The survey was guided by the End of Life Care in India Task Force (ELICIT), whose members include the Indian Association of Palliative Care, the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Indian Academy of Neurology.

One of the objectives of the survey was also to make the people aware about the concept of a living will, according to HCAH.

Post understanding, 76% found the concept highly relevant for themselves, 15% required more information to make an informed decision about drafting a living will and 9% found a living will irrelevant to them and immoral. The latter stated its misuse and inability to decide the course of their last moments themselves, as reasons for not wishing to draft a living will.

Source: The Living Wiell Survey, 2019

Of the 76% people who found a living will relevant to them, 91% said they wished to discontinue any life support system in case they were declared terminally ill on artificial life support with no or marginal hope of recovery.

“The survey clearly shows that with more awareness around living wills, many more Indians would be able to take such informed decisions,” said RK Mani, head of ELICIT, in an email statement.

(Sharma is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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At least 107 persons have been killed in left-wing extremism (LWE)-linked violence across the country so far in 2019, including in Gadchiroli, where the largest attack in recent years resulted in the deaths of 15 members of a police quick response team (QRT) and a driver travelling in a private vehicle.

Over the five years to April 2019, there have been 942 Naxal/Maoist attacks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that no major bomb blasts have taken place during the tenure of his National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, but SATP data show 942 Naxal attacks in India between January 1, 2014, and April 11, 2019, as FactChecker reported on April 15, 2019. These attacks have left 451 people dead and 1,589 injured.

Nevertheless, these numbers are lower than during the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, as IndiaSpend reported on April 27, 2019. There were 1,415 LWE-linked violent incidents in 2013; 1,136 in 2012; 1,760 in 2011 and 2,213 in 2010.

The 2010 figure was the highest ever recorded since the formation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on September 21, 2004, according to SATP.

Under the current NDA government, there were 833 LWE-linked incidents in 2018; 908 in 2017; 1,048 in 2016; and 1,089 in 2015, as per data submitted in parliament by the central home affairs ministry in December 2018.

The security forces achieved a better ‘kill ratio’–the number of personnel killed as against the number of Naxalites killed–in 2018 (more than three Naxalites killed for each security personnel death) than in 2017 (fewer than two Naxalites for one security personnel), as per home ministry data submitted in parliament in February 2019.

On October 7, 2018, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said left-wing extremism would be eliminated within 2-3 years. In 2015, the government had launched a ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ for the security and development of Naxal/Maoist-affected areas and their populations, and for improving security forces’ training and equipment.

The NDA government had claimed that squeezing the funding for Naxal and other terrorist groups was one of the main motivations for demonetisation in November 2016. Union Minister for Law and Justice as well as Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, had tweeted that demonetisation had “broken the back of terrorists and Naxalites”.

Singh’s predecessor, former home minister P. Chidambaram, had similarly claimed in 2010 that left-wing extremism would be crushed within three years.

Yet, under successive governments over 20 years to 2017, Naxal/Maoist violence claimed more than 12,000 lives, including of 2,700 security forces personnel, Business Standard reported on July 9, 2017.

Naxalites/Maoists control pockets in 68 districts in 10 states, though nearly 90% of their activity is limited to 35 districts, as per the home ministry.

(Sharma is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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