Moa Jamir
The persistent joblessness in Nagaland State is affirmed both by official data and lived experience. Needless to say, it is a recurring topic at hearth as well as at policy level and political circles. However, a concrete remedy is still elusive.
Take the case of the annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. In the first two reports that were released in June 2019 and 2020 respectively, Nagaland had the distinction of being one of the states with the highest unemployment rates in India.
In the first PLFS (2017-18), Nagaland had the highest unemployment rate in India at 21.4%. To put the enormity of the issue into perspective, the All-India rate during the period was a mere 6.0%. When the second report was released in June 2020, with 2018-19 as the reference period, the unemployment rate in Nagaland was pegged at 17.4%, second only to the Union Territory of Lakshadweep at 31.6%.
Though the rate was a decline from the previous report, it can be considered most concerning, given that the All-India unemployment rate was just 5.1% during the reference period. The Worker Population Ratio in the state was 32.8% and 38.1% respectively in 2017-2018 and 2018-19, one of the lowest among the States and UTs.
When the PLFS first came out in June 2019, it was received with shock initially, followed by a sort of denial and justification that the state’s populace only considers jobs in the government sector as employment, thus, making the rate appear high. Accordingly, it is important to know what parameters were taken into consideration to arrive at the rate.
As per the NSO, PLFS was designed with two major objectives for the measurement of employment and unemployment. Firstly, to measure the dynamics in labour force participation and employment status in the short time interval of three months for only the urban areas in the Current Weekly Status (CWS); and secondly, for both rural and urban areas, to measure the labour force estimates on key parameters in both usual status (principal status + subsidiary status) and CWS.
The principal status considered the activity status “on which a person spent relatively long time (major time criterion) during 365 days preceding the date of survey” while the subsidiary status considered “activity status in which a person in addition to his/her usual principal status, performs some economic activity for 30 days or more for the reference period of 365 days preceding the date of survey.” Consequently, it included both short term and long term economic activities, implying that any productive activity could have been considered as a measure.
While the PLFS report is yet to be released for this year, as reflected by other economic data, the rate, in most probability, must have worsened. For instance, ‘Report on the Inter-State Movement of Stranded Persons’ released by the State Government on December 4, during the May-July 2020 period, there were 13,594 returnees to Nagaland. In February 2021, the Union Labour and Employment Minister in a written reply to Rajya Sabha informed that out of 1.14 crore inter-state migrant workers returning to their home-states, 11,750 were from Nagaland.
With the apparent saturation of jobs in the government sector and limited avenues elsewhere, persistent unemployment, among others, has risky socio-economic and political consequences.
Amid the pandemic, the State Government had announced a slew of measures to combat resultant economic challenges brought about by the global pandemic, including the case for a ‘self-reliant’ Nagaland. It is adding a new dimension to the persistent unemployment problem.
Policy-wise, Nagaland Government has lots of intent to tackle the problem; it is time to concretise.
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