Mazie Nakhro, PhD
Many Americans in the United States are very frustrated with President Barrack Obama because he has been unable to fix the problem of unemployment which remains at 9.0 percent. And unless he does something quick to bring the number further down, he may end up as a one-time President.
In Nagaland, our unemployment rate could be as high as 40 percent or more. By some estimate, there could be already one lakh unemployed youths in our State, plus possibly more than a thousand educated job-seekers coming out from colleges every year. This represents adults (ages 20 to 54) who would like to work but cannot find a job that can bring in a regular income. Often they suffer from lower standard of living, anxiety about the future, and reduced self-esteem. They form a huge part of our labor force which is not contributing to the production of goods and services---that is, they represent a significant loss of productive human resources for our economy.
What are we really doing to solve our unemployment problem? To be sure, our elected leaders declared 2010 as The Year of Entrepreneurs; they also sent some youths aboard for vocational training; they often sponsor capacity building seminars and are willing to offer free monies to selected entrepreneurs. But mostly, their idea of job creation has been by expanding the size of government and then offering new government jobs. Other than these shallow and superficial fixes, our elected leaders seem to be short of ideas, let alone coming up with a well-thought out plan. So please allow me, a commoner, to share some thoughts of mine in regard to job creation:
1. The right way to create jobs is to downsize the government through a distributed processing called devolution of power. In other words, we must start focusing more on the development of our communities and villages rather than growing bigger government. This could possibly mean moving some 10,000 government employees closer to their respective villages or districts. And since there are some 1428 villages in Nagaland, the government could consider paying for three more new posts in each village to empower each community to function more like a mini-government so it can assume responsibility for all-round development. This experiment of local self-government has been the key to the development of almost every community (county) in the United States. And this can also lead to thousands of job opportunities both at the local level and in the private sector in Nagaland.
2. The government must go the route of privatization, not nationalization. A recent research on work experiences in Europe, for instance, demonstrates that once a company is taken over by the government, it rarely becomes profitable again. Of the fourteen largest state-owned manufacturers in Western Europe, all of which benefited from numerous subsidies from governments, only one chemical firm from Netherlands has earned a consistent return. In Great Britain and Italy, most nationalized firms have become afflicted with workers’ unions and are causing graved budgetary crisis. So we must learn from failed experiments like these and maybe choose to do the opposite. Perhaps our government could introduce in-house entrepreneurship in the form of venture groups. For example, it could give 5000 government employees the opportunity to start their own small businesses or private companies. And these workers could still be paid by the government on the condition that each one of them would provide employment to two other persons, thereby creating a total of 10,000 new jobs over a 10 year period.
3. Our politicians must understand that it is the small businesses, not government institutions, which serve as the engine for economic growth and prosperity in all developed countries. This, of course, does not mean that our politicians may start their own businesses with public funds. As public servants, they are to serve others to become prosperous. To put it in another way, our government should empower the private sector, especially the small businesses, in the following ways: reduce bureaucratic red tape, eliminate “cuts and commissions”, reduce regulatory barriers to foreign trade, build good roads, provide adequate power supply, and ensure the rule of law. Without these in place, no business can survive. Also, as starting a business costs 74.6% of per capita income in India (according to a World Bank’s 2008 report), another thing our government could do is sanctioning loans based on training and business plans of individual applicants. For example, if 5000 individuals who benefit from government loans can successfully start new businesses and each one employs two persons, we would have created 15,000 new jobs.
4. The government should invest a lot more money on infrastructural development such as roads, bridges, railways, and airports. These are our economic lifelines. Better roads and railways facilitate speed of communication and access to market. Best of all, the development of a proper construction industry can become our biggest employer as it can provide job opportunities to thousands of people. Also with the fast growing population facing us, the need of constructing new houses will considerably increase, especially in town and cities. This means thousands of more jobs could be created even in the housing construction sector.
5. We must become producers and suppliers by making use of our human capital and natural resources. When outsiders begin to buy our products and services, we can become more prosperous and powerful. As such, we must start manufacturing companies of all sorts with labels that say, “Made in Nagaland.” By the way, we should not assume that only people with college degrees can do these jobs. Contrary to common belief, academic attainments are of little real significance in performing most tasks. Often the “unqualified” perform above expected levels as they can be more diligent and hard-working. According to a research, the not-so-educated citizens and the aliens who do not know the languages of their host countries performed high-level work in the economies of many European nations. Similarly, unschooled peasants in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan build television sets, automobiles, electronic devices, semiconductor chips, musical instruments, among others. Similarly, nothing should keep our Nagas from accomplishing what others have been able to do.
6. Both the government and private companies could introduce some apprenticeship programs to people who are willing to work for less pay or no pay in exchange for career-conditioned appointments following completion of their academic and work experience requirements. In this way a hiring company can produce a skilled workforce while meeting its own professional, technical, and administrative needs even during periods of financial struggle. On the other hand, those under career experience programs can improve their career opportunities.
7. High-tech companies and industries which we cannot set up by ourselves must be lured in, that is, we must seek collaboration with outside companies or simply allow others to set up their own companies on the condition that they would provide employment and support our local economy. This is exactly what United States does: It attracts the best talents from all over the world with the hope that they would contribute toward building a richer and better America.
8. Opportunities for employment are infinite to the creative and the bold. They know that inventing a job is better than finding a job. So they look for problem areas where others are not working on and think of something to do about them; in places where products are defective, they think of innovation; if something is missing or unexplored, they see opportunities for invention. Indeed, it is in these areas we could possibly make the biggest money and create the most number of jobs. This could happen if we could come up with a technological innovation of product or design which could make lives even slightly easier. What if we could turn algae into bio-fuel or take advantage of our hilly terrain to provide a better system of generating hydro-electricity? Or what if one of us could discover a cure for cancer or Parkinson’s disease? Such a discovery has the potential to generate revenue that can easily feed a small nation, let alone creating tens of thousands of jobs.
9. Tourism industry can be a goldmine for the Naga people. By transforming Nagaland into a world-class tourist destination, we could generate sufficient revenue to feed our entire Naga people all year round. Just imagine how much an Indian family on tour could contribute toward our local economy. As we know, an Indian middle class household has an annual income between Rs 3.4 lakh to Rs 17 lakh and those who are in this category number around 250 million people. Many of them look forward to having a refreshing break somewhere away from crowded city life. So it is not unrealistic to believe that our Indian tourists alone can easily support us if we do our part in attracting them. On top of it all, all this could lead to creating thousands of jobs for us in all tourism related fields such as travel industry, hotel industry, entertainment industry, telecommunication industry, and so forth. Again, this is the kind of reasoning many economists in United States use and more so during this period of their economic recession. Considering that a Chinese tourist on average spends $6,243 per visit to America, some believe that making visa process easily available for foreign tourists could bring in huge revenue and potentially create 1.3 million jobs in their country. And of course, our Nagas could attract Chinese tourists too to accomplish similar goals.
10. There are more employment opportunities and better paying jobs outside of Nagaland. But there is one thing which is keeping us away from all these, namely, ourselves. This being the case, our government should do something about it, say, we could appoint our top 100 economic growth experts as our “Economic Ambassadors” (not Diplomats) in all major cities of India and abroad. Their responsibilities could be as follows: (i) promote international trade, investments and tourism on behalf of the Naga people at home, and (ii) help our young people to find employment opportunities all over the world, thereby adding thousands of more jobs outside of Nagaland.
So the question is this: Can we create 100,000 new jobs in 10 years or so for our Naga people? Absolutely! We can do it provided the best and the brightest from our society can rise up to the challenge and synergistically work at it for the sake of our bigger Naga family.
