How to tackle Rural Unemployment in India?
Rural Unemployment is a big problem for India. The unemployed people in rural villages of India cannot be employed in industries operating in big towns. They have to be settled in villages.
More employment can be found for them if land reforms are effectively carried out and surplus land is distributed among them, if the Government and the credit institutions play their part in stimulating village industries and handicrafts and if public works are undertaken on a massive scale to build up community assets.
It is not often realized that surplus labor can be easily turned into a social asset and that a great deal can be done without very large capital investment if dynamic leadership at the district and village level is forthcoming.
Waste land can be brought under plough, flood control measures can be adopted, wells can be dug and roads built up through local labor working at minimum wages.
If more purchasing power is placed in the hands of the rural poor, their increased consumption standards would generate greater employment opportunities than if purchasing power remained largely with the well-to-do urban classes.
The villagers would need more food, more clothes and shoes and other articles of common consumption. They would build houses for themselves. This would help in absorption of more labor.
Social justice, therefore, means expansion of greater employment opportunities in villages.
At present the demand for basic necessities of rural people is very limited and their consumption standards are very low. They fall materially short of what is needed for healthy and comfortable life. Once the consumption standards of the poor increase, employment opportunities would infinitely expand.
Another way of expanding employment opportunities is expansion of social services like health and education.
House construction with State assistance on a massive scale provides still another method of absorbing labor in socially useful work.
