Employment and Unemployment in Karnataka

Economic growth and employment generation form parts of a strategy of removal of poverty in every developing society. Until the Fourth Five-Year Plan, greater emphasis was laid in Karnataka, as in other parts of India, on merely accelerating growth. Employment generation and income redistribution were not kept at the centre of planning. No systematic efforts were made to give an employment orientation to programmes and policies, which if designed to maximise employment must take into account the size and growth of the labour force, the magnitude of employment and unemployment, the employment content of programmes and their implications for the target groups. In assessing the magnitude of unemployment and underemployment, western classifications and methodology were adopted. It was seldom recognised that these ill-served the programmers if they were to make a dent on the increasing unemployment and poverty. This approach needed modification. In this paper we attempt to delineate such modifications while discussing the growth of the workforce, the employment and unemployment programmes adopted during and after the Fifth Five-Year Plan and the merits of the new policies.