Every now and then the Indian government promulgates something so laden with command-economy let-it-be-so wishful...
Written by The Indian Express
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Every now and then the Indian government promulgates something so laden with command-economy let-it-be-so wishful thinking that it makes anyone wonder the last 20 years were a dream. One such measure is in the labour ministrys recently released guideline: that no power or steel project can have more than 20 skilled foreign workers. Remember,this is not about foreigners working with the wrong visas. It is about legal workers,doing jobs that we simply may not have enough people to do.
This is,of course,retrograde. It hampers Indias openness,and will inevitably lead to rule breaking,as all rules do which ignore basic ground realities. But it also betrays an ignorance of what Indias priorities should be that is as shocking as it is profound. India is,to put it bluntly,short of everything. This country is short of skills; the number of engineers graduating per capita is abysmally low and too few choose to become civil engineers anyway,leading to a severe shortage. Perhaps we have been so brainwashed into believing that India is an endless pool of skilled manpower to think that any project has enough to draw upon. But surely the labour ministry reads its own statistics?
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This short-sightedness will hit hardest at what India is most short of: reasonable infrastructure. Here,once youve already handed out contracts to foreign companies,choosing to cripple their productivity is an absurd,self-defeating measure. Theres more: for steel,for example,the backbone of any infrastructure push,India recognises that a 120 million tonnes will be needed per year in 2020,up from 54 million tonnes today. But even eight years from now,with a capacity required of 80 million tonnes per annum,Tata Steel estimates that more than 8,00,000 skilled people will be required to work in the sector. Does anyone think that we are producing enough skilled people to fill that need? These guidelines merely ensure that we will not meet our targets and keep millions in poverty.
