PHD Chamber of Commerce & IndustrySeminar on

Industry – Academia Linkages for Gainful Employment with Reference to Women of Rajasthan State

February 19, 2013Talk by

Prof BR Natarajan, President – Vice ChancellorSangam University Bhilwara Rajasthan 311001

http://www.sangamuniversity.ac.in

Scientific Manpower Committee (1947)

Engineering Personnel Committee (1956)

AICTE (1958, 1966, 1969, 1971, ………… )

Thacker Committee (1961)

Kothari Education Commission (1966)

National Policy on Education (1968)

Ministry of Education, GOI (1978) Draft National Policy on Education (1979) AIEI (1980) Nayudamma Review Committee (1980)

Challenge of Education – A Policy Perspective Ministry of Education, GOI (1985) IIT Review Report (1986) PM Shri P V Narsimha Rao Convocation Address at Visva Bharati University (1995)

Many more Committees, Commissions, Seminars, Symposiums, Workshops, Round Tables, …………………………………………… have all unequivocally advocated and emphasized on the need for strong Industry Academia Linkages in India.

Employment trends of women workers in India has been showing increasing magnitude in numbers over time. In spite of some positive changes in the educational attributes of women, a majority of them remain illiterate.

Nearly 85 per cent of rural and 59 per cent of urban women workers are illiterate or literate only up to primary level, delimiting gains to the few who have benefited from relatively higher levels of education. These are mostly the better-off sections of the population.

In spite of some gradual decline in the percentage of women workers, their share compared to men in agriculture remains significant and has in fact risen due to the shift away from agriculture by men.

In rural areas, women workers have shifted into manufacturing; construction; trade, hotels and restaurants; and community, social and personal services, while urban women gained employment in manufacturing and finance, insurance, real estate and business industrial sectors.

Most of the gender stereotypes continue to prevail with bulk of the women involved in occupations such as maids, farmers, bidi makers, nurses, primary school teachers, and so on. The newer occupational avenues of computing machine operators; transport conductors and guards; village officials; elected and legislative officials; engineering technicians; scientific, medical and technical persons; other professional workers not elsewhere classified are among those which have had a higher growth rate in recent times.

Since more women are likely to enter the labour force in the years to come, measures to ease the double burden of work, with efforts to provide basic amenities and support services for their overwhelming domestic responsibilities, need to be put in place. Gender dimensions of work necessarily require policy attention

• In India there are 354 million people whose economic condition is poor. If women are empowered then every family will be a happy family. In India nearly 31 cr women in villages live in poverty. If women in every village are well educated and employed then poverty in India can be eradicated.

• If government and private firms like banks provide employment opportunity to rural women, she can lead her family happily and she can also overcome problems.

At present urban women get better education and employment while the rural women do not get proper education as well as employment and hence she cannot compete with the urban women. The banks which started smaller units in villages have helped the rural women by saving both her time and money and have also provided good employment opportunities for them.

According to Sher Verick , ILO's senior employment specialist

• The slowdown of the economy will add to India's employment challenges in the short term

• In the long term, India must create more manufacturing jobs to take advantage of its 'demographic dividend' and ensure more job opportunities for women.

The United Nations Development Programme's India representative Lise Grande says

“Even India's high growth years did not create

jobs, so a slowing economy would make matters worse in the labour market. The combination of policy uncertainty , the large current account and fiscal deficits and the slowest growth in a decade (in 2012) has brought bad news on the employment front. If the economy grows at a slower rate of around 6% over the next five years, the news is going to get much worse.”

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recent report, while more than 80 percent of men in South Asia are employed or looking for work, only 32 percent of women have these possibilities. These figures show that females are far less likely than men to work or be employed as a result of cultural attitudes and social norms in the region

According to the ILO's global employment trends report 2013, in some parts of Asia, women's participation in the labour market is dropping further and is increasingly being seen as one of the main causes behind the slow growth in employment.

One such place is India, whose labour force participation rate for women fell from just over 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 29 per cent in 2009-10, according to the text.

Out of 131 countries with available data, India ranks 11th in female labour force participation, despite its rapid economic growth.

According to he ILO economist, Steven Kapsos, • Strengthening anti-discrimination legislation in

employment in all occupations will be an essential step to expand job opportunities for women.

• It is necessary to reduce the large differences in pay and working conditions, which are often observed between women and men, to increase the number of women seeking work.

• South Asia economic growth weakened and did not bring significant numbers of decent works, so overall unemployment rate remained low at 3.8 % during 2012, while youth unemployment was 9.6 %.

• Women need to move into areas such as food processing, where employment is growing, Plannning Commission Deputy Chairman, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said at an ILO event organized by Labour Ministry at Delhi on Thursday 14 Feb 2013.

• “Women are locked into activities that are getting phased out,” he said, without specifying the areas, but admitting that the Government needed to do a lot more to create more jobs for both men and women.

According to an ILO study, despite strong economic growth, female labour force participation was falling in India, while it had increased in countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.

While the ILO study cited the trend of girls opting for education as one reason for this, experts pointed at a grim scenario of no quality jobs even when education was over.

• Labour Force Participation Rates LFPR is defined as the number of ‘persons days’ in the labour force per 1,000 persons days. According to the NSSO’s 66th round, during the period 2004-05 to 2009-10, LFPR remained almost the same for rural males but decreased by about 6 percentage points for rural females (from 33 per cent to 26.5 per cent).

• It said during the period, the rate decreased by about one percentage point for urban males and declined by about 3 percentage points for the urban females (from 17.8 per cent to 14.6 per cent).

Women have great potential to be employed in the four prominent sectors namely

Banking Health Education Police.

BANKING Banks have been given a mandate to reach out to the

un-reached by opening ultra small branches and adopting the branchless banking model in villages situated far from the existing bank branches. In most of the cases, a local woman will be a business correspondent to operate branchless banking units.

The scope for setting up such units is immense, as there are 6.31 lakh villages in India. Even if banks plan to extend this facility to one lakh villages, it would require one lakh business correspondents. Women are more suitable for this job, as they would be rendering this service from their homes only.

HEALTH The net profit of the top 25 pharmaceutical

companies in India is reported to be over Rs 10,000 crore. Such companies, under CSR can adopt some of the primary health centres in the most backward districts and fund the maintenances, including the salaries of doctors and nurses.

Since there are 22,925 primary health centres and

1.39 lakh sub-centres, the feasibility of appointing nurses in the sub-centres may be examined by selecting them from the local areas.

EDUCATION

• Considering various reports on the decline in the quality of primary education, it emerges that shortage of teachers is one of the prime reasons.

• Recruitment of female teachers from the villages and semi-urban areas should given preference and their postings may be confined to such areas only.

Police In India only 2% women work in

police sector.

Move for more women in police force, would help prevent atrocities on them

Unemployment among female diploma holders is higher than their male counterparts, with unemployment rates reaching 34.5 per cent for women — much higher than the 18.9 per cent recorded for men during 2009-10.

This has costs for a developing economy, particularly as an increase in the number of women entering the workforce could be just the low-hanging fruit needed to get growth back on track.

Young people have been particularly affected by the slowdown, with an unemployment rate of over 10 per cent, much higher than the average.

It is significant that young diploma holders suffer more, implying that India is doing a poor job of reaping its demographic dividend, with most graduating individuals lacking the skills sought by employers.

• In terms of regional concentration of women workers, the states with relatively higher women's work participation are the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; and the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Orissa. These states show slight variations across rural and urban locations.

• In terms of National Classification of Occupations - NCO categories, same states which have a larger proportion of women workers are also the states where there is a demand for women within these occupations .

According to ILO Report, Spinners, weavers, knitters, dyers and related workers (NCO 75) also shows a large share of women workers in non-agricultural activities. In actual numbers, women workers in this group declined by 250,000 while the number of male workers in this group shrunk by over 400,000.

The occupational category of tailors, dress makers, sewers, upholsterers and related workers (NCO 79) also reports significant numbers of women workers increasing over time.

While men predominate as merchants and shopkeepers, women as working proprietors, managers and directors in wholesale and retail trading units (NCO 22) have increased over time, with over 200,000 UPS women workers in this occupation. This category is prominent for the additional employment in sheer numbers of women workers both in rural and urban areas.

Interestingly, women's share as working proprietors, directors and managers in occupations such as mining, construction, manufacturing concerns (NCO 24) as well as other services (NCO 25) has also registered an increase over time. This is reported both in rural and urban areas.

The segment of occupation in which women, especially young girls, are most prominently visible in the mushrooming urban retail units is that of salespersons, shop assistants and related workers (NCO 43). Again, the increase over time in actual numbers is much more in urban areas (over 300,000), than in rural areas (which is not unsubstantial at 100,000).

• Food and beverage processors is another category (NCO 77) where substantial women are principal workers. The increase in this occupational group is primarily in rural areas for grain millers, food preservers, canners and bakers, confectioners, sweetmeat makers and related food processors. Women UPS workers in urban areas in this occupational group have declined over the period 1993-94 to 2004-05.

• Another occupational segment where women have experienced an increase in terms of net additional employment over time is that of hotels and restaurant keepers (NCO 50), and as cooks, waiters, bartenders and related domestic and international workers (NCO 52). The increases in these categories have been both in rural and urban areas. This would include all the self-employed small eateries on pavements and highway roads as well as those mushrooming in malls and shopping complexes/multiplexes.

“Where Aspiration Meets Opportunity” motto driven Sangam University Bhilwara envisages launching of Cooperative programs integrating work and study to simultaneously address the issues of Developing appropriate Human Resources for the Industry and reinforce its commitment to providing Purposeful education.

Thank You