Higher Education for Employment Generation

The generation of productive and adequately remunerated employment is an indispensable component in the fight against poverty. While this task presents a major challenge for all the States and the UTs in India, it is by no means an insurmountable one. However, success depends on a number of key factors. It requires first and foremost, a restoration of higher and more stable rates of economic growth. But this will not be sufficient. It also requires that supporting policies and programmes be put in place to deliberately stimulate employment in all sectors of the economy which hold the greatest promise for employment and income generation on one hand, and on the other, the implementation of strategies which can, among other things, improve the access of all groups to education and training and income generating activities in a sustainable manner.

The task of employment generation requires concerted action by several ministries and departments of government both at the national as well as the state levels. But it is not a task for governments alone. Employers’ and workers’ organizations, as well as other members of civil society must play an increasingly active role in the process. The support of the international community is also critical, not only in terms of resource flows, but in changing the rules of international economic systems in favour of poor producers and consumers.

These suggestions are being discussed with the hope that it will stimulate some dialogue and serve as a basis for possible action on this very important topic by bringing out different publications and periodicals both in the print as well as the electronic media with a view to making everybody aware regarding the availability of jobs besides the facilities for studies, training and research in different institutions, schools, colleges and universities.

Strategies for Employment Generation

1. To collect data and information related to the existing publications including newspapers, journals and periodicals providing information and news regarding employment opportunities besides facilities regarding academic and professional training and research in different vocational fields.

2. To bring out daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, six-monthly and yearly newspapers, journals, periodicals and other publications related to employment and training with a view to generating employment specially among the weekers sections of the society.

3. To publish books, encyclopaedias, directories and dictionaries on different topics with a view to generating employment.

4. To connect the association with the labour market mechanisms and patterns to give into the pattern and intensity of poverty and into the factors concentrating it among particular groups.

5. To give prominance to labour market policies, as well as those related to employment, labour institutions, social protection and human resource development and poverty eradication strategies.

6. To distinguish between poverty due to exclusion from access to jobs and poverty associated with the nature of employment and the levels of income which it generates while attempting to analyze the labour market situation in the Indian Subcontinent and its impact on poverty.

7. To assess the degree to which labour market exclusion is directly linked to poverty and the extent to which state or community safety nets or family support systems exist or whether it affects particular members of households (younger persons, for example) where there is another income source.

8. To place the creation of employment at the centre of national strategies and policies, with the full participation of employers and trade unions and other parts of civil society.

9. To help and assist in the formulation of policies to expand work opportunities and increase productivity in both rural and urban sectors.

10. To provide education and training that enable workers and entrepreneurs to adapt to changing technologies and economic conditions.

11. To help generate quality jobs, with full respect for the basic rights of workers.

12. To give special priority, in the design of policies, to the problems of structural, long-term employment and underemployment of youth, women, persons with disabilities and all other disadvantaged groups and individuals.

13. To empower the women for gender balance in decision-making processes at all levels and gender analysis in policy development to ensure equal employment opportunities and wage rates for women and to enhance harmonious and mutually beneficial partnerships between women and men in sharing family and employment responsibilities.

14. To also empower members of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups through the provisions of proper and appropriate education and training.

15. To look for a broader recognition and understanding of work and employment and greater flexibility in working time arrangements for both men and women.

16. To assist in alleviating poverty and unemployment: either by focusing on the members of economically weaker sections of the society and other groups directly affected by the economic reform and adjustment policies such as retrenched workers, or more generally by addressing chronic and structural poverty and unemployment.

17. To strengthen the social acceptability and the political viability of adjustment and reform programmes.

18. To help in creating a new approach and culture of social service delivery based on a flexible institutional mechanism circumventing the bureaucratic structure and encouraging participatory and decentralized development with the participation of local groups and associations.

19. To develop strategies to assist the formation and strengthening of collective action in the informal sector by developing relations with trade associations.

20. To raise awareness on the importance of good working conditions and social security by extending workers’ education programmes to the informal sector.

21. To assist in improving working conditions of their subcontractors in the informal sector with a view to enabling them to create more employment opportunities for trained and skilled persons.

22. To assist informal sector operators to take part in trade fairs.

23. To assist informal sector operators to organize themselves effectively.

24. To integrate issues on occupational safety and health and social security in programmes to raise productivity.

25. To assist informal sector self-help associations to integrate awareness raising on occupational safety and health into their activities.

26. To establish innovative market services for the development of adult workers, by expanding the role of employers and organized employees in the planning and delivery of services, including training, retraining, job search, placement, skills identification and counselling.

27. To increase the capacity of the private sector to perform its role in the training and development of the young men and women to acquire techno-managerial as well as entrepreneurial skills.

28. To improve the existing employment market information system.

29. To help adult workers to acquire new skills at the technical and supervisory levels in order to make them eligible for higher level jobs at higher wages in occupations essential to economic growth or in their own businesses.

30. To reduce the transition time to new jobs for displaced workers.

31. To accelerate the entry of female workers into skilled technician, master craftsperson or supervisory positions.

32. To establish a permanent private sector mechanism to fund a variety of workforce development activities and create a forum for workers and employers to collaborate in implementing human resource development strategies and programmes.

33. To provide skill and interests assessment and career and employment counselling to determine the training, placement or business development support, the employable persons need to acquire the job, promotion or suitable income generating activity.

34. To provide a comprehensive package of services to include brokering and referral of workers to jobs, on-the-job training, business development support services and specialized training at the craftsperson, artisan, supervisory or managerial level and appropriate entrepreneurial training to place workers in new jobs, better jobs or self-employment opportunity.

35. To promote the concept of establishing learning laboratories which would provide computer assisted training e.g. literacy, numeracy and workplace basics such as problem solving, oral communication and planning and organizing work.

36. To establish Employment and Training Market Services Centres to introduce innovative approaches in human resource development.

37. To establish the principle of equality between men and women as a basis for employment policy and promoting gender-sensitivity training to eliminate prejudice against the employment of women.

38. To eliminate gender discrimination, including by taking positive action, where appropriate, in hiring, wages, access to credit, benefits, promotion, training, career development, job assignment, working conditions, job security and social security benefits.

39. To encourage various actors to join forces in designing and carrying out comprehensive and coordinated programmes that stimulate the resourcefulness of youth, preparing them for durable employment or self-employment, providing them with guidance, vocational and managerial training, social skills, work experience and education in social values.

40. To cause research on the underlying factors which are most important in differing national contexts in determining the levels of youth unemployment.

41. To evaluate all types of policies and programmes tried in different five-year plans with a view to designing a foolproof and long-term strategy for employment generation.

42. To locate the factors which influence the success or failure of specific policies and programmes relating to employment and training.

43. To prepare a Policy and Programme Manual for policy makers to aim primarily at national capacity building for the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes for countering youth unemployment.

44. To help analyse the national background characteristics, financial constraints, current educational efforts and effects and present conditions of societal development in different States and UTs of India.

45. To help the Central Government establish appropriate targets for employment generation and derive suitable strategies for implementing policies and programmes to meet the needs of the educated unemployed.

46. To establish a Life and Career Advising Centre - a single point of contact for student counselling on academic, personal and career issues.

47. To create a learning environment all over the country that encourages students to become actively involved in their own education.

48. To help reduce unemployment in the country by assisting the Central and the State Governments and public institutions in the initiation of professional and job oriented courses and by introducing the urban as well as rural entrepreneurship programmes for self employment.

49. To encourage an employment policy that is free of prejudice and party politics which promotes new ideas relating to sustainability.

50. To strengthen the voluntary as well as non governmental organisations in order to make them available for the organisation and implementation of programmes having a positive, social, economic and educational content with a view to having more number of job givers than job seekers.

51. To serve as a centre of ideas and experience and dissemination of employment and training information on national as well as global job markets and its availabilities, reach, awareness, policy, law, research promotion, and preparedness in particular.

52. To help the Central and the State Governments in organising formal and non formal training programmes in attitudinal and behavioural change for bringing productivity and efficiency with the help of the trained employers and employees.

53. To publicize through the media an international network instances of successful policies, programmes and demonstrations regarding employment promotion and bring these success stories to the attention of policy makers.

54. To establish a national network of like minded NGOs with the ability to publicise the activities related to employment generation.

55. To strengthen international scientific research organisations so that they can play a larger part in shaping and coordinating the research agenda on vocationalisation of careers.

56. To work closely with policy research centres focusing on global scale resource and development issues to bridge the gap between basic research and policy on employbility.

57. To evaluate the existing curricula of the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level courses and propose necessary changes for making these programmes fit for helping the alumnis to find self employment opportunities by acquiring entrepreneurial leadership techniques.

58. To address the universal shortage of trained personnel in new and emerging job oriented areas through a sharp increase in funds to be sanctioned to universities and institutions.

59. To advise the younger generation for acquiring appropriate knowledge and technologies from the aged persons and senior citizens and to popularise their proven ideas and experiences.

60. To use restructured educational and training programmes to reorient vocational education for creating jobs in the new and emerging fields.

61. To help initiate training cum production cum rehabilitation centres in the rural as well as urban areas for the benefit of the younger generation.

62. To create employment generation environment by updating the existing vocational training programmes in the polytechnics, institutions, colleges and universities.

63. To strengthen with adequate study materials the existing distance learning programmes for enabling the working persons to strengthen their qualification and encouraging earning while learning.

64. To prepare instructional texts including audio and video lessons on employment and training to be distributed through the existing institutions as well as through the new outfits in the country.

65. To use and popularise the existing and new satellite channels for teaching and training through the air for the benefit of the citizenry.

66. To aid in organising conferences, seminars, meetings, discussions, debates, study courses, collection of statistics, exhibitions, shows, tour trips and to establish different endowments and scholarships for the promotion and furtherance of the employment generation strategy.

67. To organise employment museums for displaying the available vacancies besides different types of advertisements in the print and the electronic media.

68. To conduct sponsored as well as non sponsored research programmes with the support of Central and State Governments and publish such reports and case books.

69. To arouse in teachers and other educators a full awareness of our responsibilities in moulding future generations for a peaceful employment and work culture.

70. To promote that kind of education that will help each individual from earliest years to develop full human potential for constructive, peaceful living in the expanding communities in which one grows; family, neighbourhood, school, local community, country, in fact, the whole human world.

71. To seek to enable individuals through constant educational and career improvement to deal with and resolve misunderstanding, personal as well as social, in the spirit of wisdom, charity and duty.

72. To support design, production and wide spread distribution of educational materials for the furtherance of social progress, international understanding, and worldly stability.

73. To make the full use of mass media for the cause of education especially in the proper communication of controversial views and issues, local and global, so as to maximize cooperation and conciliation.

74. To make everybody aware regarding the need for national as well as international integration and cooperation.

75. To invite representatives of different countries including the universities, NGOs and regulatory bodies for discussing issues like labour, employment, entrepreneurship and education.

76. To seek support of the educational and scientific organisations for using their facilities and infrastructure for conducting different programmes related to clean as well as green jobs.

77. To help design courses on subjects and topics generally not covered by existing institutions but are of great importance viewing the changes in the societal systems.

78. To continue to be open in ideas, methods, systems, places with no cloisters.

79. To help people through appropriate training to lead a way of life that can be sustained by our Mother Earth.

80. To justify the creation of organisations by uniting all the professionals of the country in order to influence the power structure through their function as counselling centres, and by placing them, whenever possible, in areas of conflict for equalizing the flow of knowledge, for reducing aggression and for generating attitudes of fraternization.

81. To suggest to the national and international leaders alternative approaches to the solution of problems relating to health, education, pollution, unemployment and peacelessness.

82. To encourage the establishment of institutions for learning that serves the spirit of employment generation and also by stimulating existing colleges and universities to implement courses of study related to virtual education for employment opportunities in the cyber related fields.

83. To cooperate with authorities at various levels in implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reminding the employers and the employees regarding their human rights as well as human duties.

84. To collaborate in the work of existing and functional organizations that have stated goals and purposes similar.

85. To propose to other developmental associations, programmes on peace problems that are flexible in nature and capable of being adopted and modified according to cultural background, environment, and changing needs of people.

86. To update educational means for the reciprocal dissemination of culture and the elimination of illiteracy.

87. To disseminate information in the form of advertisements and/or articles regarding selection and recruitment in public as well as private sector organisations in the publications to be brought out from time to time.

88. To conduct periodical analaysis of employment and unemployment data at both State level and all India level and projections of labour force, workforce, and unemployment in the country.

89. To suggest strategies and programmes for creating gainful employment opportunities and to look into sectoral issues and policies having a bearing on employment generation.

90. To identify gaps and to suggest necessary approach / strategies and the need based policies and programmes in the fields of occupational safety and health, skill development, social security, employment planning and policy.

91. To help provide opportunities for individuals seeking a green or ecologically responsible career available in many diverse catagories on the international, national, state and local levels; in private, public, and non-profit sectors; within different fields; and in different job functions.

92. To introduce responsible business practices fostering a competitive edge through efficiency in production, minimum generation of waste, and a more productive and healthy work force.

93. To advise the Government of India and the State Governments to constitute People's Commission on Employment Generation with a view to having immediate solution regarding unemployment as well as unemploybility.

94. To collaborate, affiliate and federate with the Central and the State Governments, agencies and bodies for implementing the projects of employment generations.

95. To raise and borrow money for the purpose of the promoting employment generation in such a manner as may be decided from time to time and to prescribe the membership fees, charges, grants-in-aid etc.

96. To purchase, take on lease or exchange, hire or otherwise acquire properties, movable or immovable and rights and privileges all over the world, which may be deemed necessary and to sell, lease, mortgage, dispose or otherwise deal with all or any part of the property.

97. To open branches, chapters and constitutent centres in different parts of the country and get them registered with appropriate authorities if needed and felt conducive for the attainment of the aims and objects with a view to creating employment.

98. To invest the money not immediately required in such securities and in such manner as may be decided from time to time, the money especially collected through subscriptions, advertisements, sponsorship, fees, gifts, endowments, donations, grants etc.

99. To finally provide information, knowledge, wisdom, and education that prepares every body for leadership and social responsibility enabling to think and communicate effectively and to develop a global awareness and sensitivity for a better global understanding, world peace and unity.

100. And to generally do all that is incidental and conducive to the attainment of the objects relating to employment.