How to create new jobs?

(Published in The New Indian Express on 20 December 2010)
Bikash Choudhury



If I were to claim of having a tool to create new jobs in the economy;
then, the prime ministers and presidents of the world would make a
beeline at my doors the next morning. Such is the attraction and
interest of global leaders to create new jobs in their economy. Recent
visit of US president to India was one such visit that focused on
creation of jobs back home. Many economists would have searched for a
tool that would have delivered new jobs and credibility to their
profession. Unfortunately, there is none in existence at the moment.
But, there is a perspective on how to deliver new jobs in the economy
looking at past trends.
Historically speaking the Industrial revolution delivered huge
amount of new blue collar jobs in Europe. And, most recently in India
the Information & communication Technology (ICT) revolution would have
added 12 million new white collar jobs to Indian Economy in the last
decade. Again, Google in six years of inception has added half a
million new jobs directly and indirectly. Taking into account our
traditional economic theory and above cited examples; we can safely
conclude that large scale jobs can be created by satisfying unmet or
undisclosed needs of customers more than proportionately. Another
inference could be that jobs also can be created by developing
solutions for chronic problems of customers in the market.
In Indian context, there is a huge unmet need of quality school
education, primary health care, energy, logistic for goods-services
and human movements. Further, we have problem on technology front for
creating World class Durable roads, railway infrastructure and
affordable air travel in shortest period of time. The fulfillment of
such needs and solution of above cited problems has the potential to
deliver millions of new jobs in Indian economy.
As a matter of policy, we need to create Business Models around each
verticals and try to attract domestic and foreign capital with some
amount of assured returns under sovereign guarantee and some portion
left to risk & reward matrix of market forces. These things are easily
said than done. However, someone somewhere in the country would make a
start in this decade. This process can be speeded up if top 500
business houses in the country create a separate venture capital fund
to finance the projects of their employees who wish to pursue
entrepreneurial dreams in the country in chosen verticals. Guess
twenty percent success rate could return an eighty percent ROI. Any
takers?