State to focus on creating large-scale job opportunities

Agriculture suffering from low labour mobility and slow growth in productivity, says official

The State government has decided to shift its focus to generating huge employment opportunities to cater to the ever-increasing demand of the youth.

Shift towards employment generation through skill development has been mandated to achieve faster reduction in poverty and unemployment. The overall strategy, the government says in its Socio-Economic Survey report for 2011-12, will be to look beyond growth and focus on employment generation.

This is in line with the Kiran Kumar Reddy government's drive to create 15 lakh jobs in the next three years under the flagship Rajiv Yuva Kiranalu in addition to the recruitment underway for filling thousands of vacancies in various departments.

The approach aims at restructuring existing policies and achieving a new vision that will be faster, more broad-based, sustainable and more inclusive. The report assumes significance as agriculture still holds the major labour force in the State accounting to 60 per cent, though down from 70 per cent of the early 1990s.

Main problem

Agriculture, according to Agriculture Department Principal Secretary I.Y.R. Krishna Rao, suffers from low labour mobility and slow growth in productivity. “Part of the main problem is that that development in service sector is happening at a level of technology where those found surplus in agriculture cannot get automatically employed,” he says.

The approach calls for ensuring productive employment in agriculture itself or creating levels of service in industrial sector where the labour with minimal skill sets are employable. This will be a major challenge for policy makers as it could lead to social unrest if employment opportunities are not created for rural labour.

Acknowledging the fact, the socio-economic report claims the thrust area for effectively utilising the abundant labour force will be skill development. This, however, will be possible by achieving much higher levels of health and education and creating an environment which fosters economic growth and expands good quality employment.