In a bid to bring employment to the center-stage in terms of policy making, the Planning Commission is pushing for shifting the focus of the country's statistical system to generating regular data on employment.
It's reform agenda list drawn up for the current fiscal includes putting in place a monitoring mechanism to track the level of employment in the economy.
The National Sample Survey Organisation will be asked to provide annual estimates of employment on current daily status basis and provide employment survey results to the plan body at 6 monthly intervals as against the current norm of generating figures once every five years. State governments will also be asked to prepare employment estimates based on data collected in state level annual sample surveys.
This would help measure the overall progress in terms of total employment created in the economy by government and non-government activities. The need to measure employment generation in the economy arises in the context of the tenth five year plan which focuses on an 8 per cent growth target for creation of 50 employment opportunities.
"Given the crucial nature of the issue, employment should be given the kind of focus given to agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s," say officials.
Feed back from the monitoring mechanism will be used to identify changes in policies and programmes at the macro level required to attain the employment target.
As part of the monitoring mechanism, central ministries and state governments have also been asked to make objective assessment of the achievement of employment creation as a result of various programmes and policies.
A number of such initiatives taken by the centre and state governments for creation of employment, however there is very little objective monitoring of employment benefits by concerned ministries.
The assessments currently available are based on certain norms used to convert some indicators like programme outlay into employment opportunities.
Since the target of 10 million employment opportunities per year contains an identifiable quantum which are to be created through governmental efforts, monitoring of progress on this account is critical, say officials.
Employment benefits are to be assessed in terms of employment generated at the level of the economy as a whole, that created as a result of central government efforts and through state government efforts.
The plan body has also proposed constitution of a group or a standing committee to work on a concept paper which will determine which should be the nodal ministry for generation of employment opportunities. "The labour ministry only looks at organised labour and that is not enough.
What we need is a ministry which looks at the entire issue of employment with a section devoted to organised labour," officials say.
The private sectors rose in employment generation on a regional and decentralised basis is also to be studied by the committee.