Criticising the Union government for its ‘pro-corporate’ economic policies, social activist Mallige said that job generation rate in India had drastically dropped after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power at the Centre. She was addressing a workshop on the possibilities of job generation and the future steps for youth movement organised at Kannada Bhavan here on Friday.

“India is sitting on a time bomb of unemployment. After BJP assumed power and began pro-corporate policies 1.1 crore youth are joining the unemployed workforce in the country every year,” she said.

“India will be the youngest country in the world by 2025 with the estimated average age of its population 35 years. We need to design such policies that facilitate creation of more jobs with less investment,” she said.

Identifying agriculture and informal sector including small and medium scale industries as the areas that have greater potential for job generation, Ms. Mallige said that the future investments must largely be directed towards them.

“POSCO, a multi-national steel making corporation, had recently invested Rs. 56,000 crore in India and created only 2,500 jobs as the entire establishment was mechanised. If the same amount of money is invested in informal sector, 5.6 lakh jobs would have been created. It is unfortunate that the Union government’s focus is more on large-scale investments that create fever jobs than on agriculture and informal sectors that create large-scale jobs,” she said.

“The size of India’s youth population is huge and it can, if united, be a game changer in country’s polity,” she said.