34 : India’s Employment Exchanges – Should they be revamped or scrapped altogether?
Bibek Debroy, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the ISAS
10 July 2008
“There have been no attempts, so far, on collecting statistical material on employment and
unemployment; the only published figures at present available are the registrations and
placements of employment exchanges. These figures cannot, however, give an idea of the
total volume of unemployment. Firstly, employment exchanges are confined to industrial
towns and the figures of registrations and placements which they compile are restricted
mostly to the industrial and commercial sector. Secondly, even in the industrial sector, there
is neither compulsion for the unemployed, to register with the exchanges, nor is there any
obligation on the part of the employer to recruit labour only through these exchanges. Even
the information regarding unemployment among the industrial workers is, thus, inadequate.
Thirdly, in the nature of the case, employment exchange statistics cannot indicate the amount
of disguised unemployment which is otherwise believed to exist. This means that the extent
to which qualified persons have to accept work which does not give them the income which
persons with similar qualifications get elsewhere cannot be assessed from these data. There is
also to some extent registration of persons who are already in employment and who desire to
seek better jobs. This tendency is reported to exist in the more qualified section of registrants,
but to the extent a region maintains these persons on the register of employment seekers,
there is an overestimate of the number unemployed.” This was not written yesterday. It is a
quote from India’s First Five Year Plan (1951-56) document.1 Nothing would substantially
change if this were to be written now.