India needs to create more manufacturing jobs, says Arvind Subramanian

India’s biggest problem has been that we have not created enough manufacturing jobs that could have provided employment to many, said Arvind Subramanian, economist and former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India said.

“So, the failure to provide enough manufacturing jobs has become one of our biggest challenges. That is why I am now very excited about the China opportunity, because Tamil Nadu has shown that this can be done — for instance, companies like Foxconn are coming here,” he said during an interaction with Abhishek Joshua, a student who is pursuing his third year Economics (Shift 2) at Loyola College. Mr. Subramanian was at Loyola College to discuss his book – ‘A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey.’

What needs to happen is this: if we have one Foxconn in Tamil Nadu, we need many more such factories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that can provide jobs, he pointed out. He further said: “One should note that the fact that we did not create enough low-skill manufacturing jobs had an additional disadvantage, because such jobs typically employ a large number of women. And if you take a clothing factory, about 80% of the workers are women. If you look at Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Bangladesh, because they did a lot of low-skill manufacturing, women got employment there.”

Mr. Subramanian also touched upon inequality. In India, when we think about inequality, we have to think about it along the lines of caste, religion, region, ethnicity, and gender, he said. “The OBCs have made significant progress in converging with the attainment of the upper castes. In that sense, inequality for them is coming down. Similarly, the Scheduled Castes have also been progressing. The two groups that have made the least progress are the Scheduled Tribes of Central India and Muslims,” he added.