‘More jobs in industry, services must to eliminate poverty’

The Dollar Business Bureau While agriculture sector has limited potential, job creation in industry and services is the key to India’s prosperity, said Arvind Panagariya, Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog. He said even though half of India’s workforce is engaged in agricultural activities, the sector contributes only 15% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The remarks came as Panagariya launched the organisation’s website www.niti.gov.in on Monday. “Unless workers have the opportunity to migrate to better paid jobs in these sectors, they will be unable to fully share in the prosperity experienced by a fast-growing economy,” Panagariya wrote in his first blog posted on the website. Expressing concern over low rate of growth in agriculture sector, he said that those engaged in agriculture are significantly poorer than those employed in industry and services. “In the recorded Indian history, the fastest that agriculture has grown nationally over a continuous ten-year period has been under 5%,” he said, adding that countries experiencing growth rates of 6% or more over long periods have grown faster in industry and services sectors. Citing examples of South Korea and China, Panagariya said that these economies grew faster because workers in agriculture could migrate to better paid jobs. The share of industry and services in employment in South Korea rose from 41.4% in 1965 to 66% in 1980 and further to 81.7% in 1990. Simultaneously, the employment share of agriculture fell. A similar pattern was observed in Taiwan during the 1960s and 1970s and more recently in China. He said that Indian farmers and their children also recognize the superior prospects that faster-growing industry and services can potentially offer. He referred to a survey conducted by NGO Lokniti, saying, 62% of all farmers are ready to quit farming if they get a job in the city. For their children, 76% say that they would like to take a profession other than farming. Seeking to allay apprehensions that the expansion of industry and services would take land away from agriculture, he said the area under non-agricultural use, which includes housing, industry, roads, railways and others, was just 8% and it rose only 1% between 1997 and 2012. Even this 1 percentage point increase did not come at the expense of agriculture. Increased multiple cropping allowed the gross area sown to rise from 57.8 to 59.4% of the total land area, he said. “In sum, agricultural growth and the expansion of good jobs in industry and services can go hand-in-hand to bring rapid elimination of poverty and shared prosperity for all,” he wrote in the blog. Apart from blogs sharing opinions of officials, the website also provides details of functions and activities of the NITI Aayog, and reports prepared by the institution.    

May 18, 2015 | 6:08 pm IST.