Youth Unemployment
The fortunate ones are those who have a permanent job that assures lifetime security. Such situations are less in number, and overpopulation has increased the tragedy of employees landing in unsecured positions. The unemployment rates have consequently peaked majorly because of the instant termination of employees from the unsecured companies.
Unemployment is posing a serious threat to the health of people and a nation’s economy and is needed to be addressed immediately.

Current Scenario of Unemployment in India
• Despite its demographic dividend and increased literacy levels, India faces youth unemployment as a major challenge for labour market policy. Young job seekers make up 49 per cent of the total unemployed in India.
• With 93 per cent of the available work provided by the informal sector, a significant number of well-educated youth in India are either unemployed, underemployed, seeking employment or between jobs, or coping with insecure work arrangements. India’s main challenge regarding youth unemployment is the lack of any form of social security system, as well as proper and adequate avenues for vocational training.
• In an environment of immense opportunities for economic growth, India requires more national as well as international cooperation among different labour market actors (trade unions, vocational training organisations, committees at the national level) to sustain it.
• Among the states and Union Territories of India, Gujarat had the lowest unemployment rate of 1.2% followed closely by Karnataka at 1.8%, Maharashtra and Chandigarh at2.8%, Madhya Pradesh at 2.9% and Telangana at 3.3% while Sikkim had the highest at 15.8%1 .In the northern India, the unemployment rate is quite high, Jammu and Kashmir at 10.5%, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 7.5%, Rajasthan at 6.5%, Punjab at 5.8%, Delhi at 5.2% and Haryana at 4.8%. According to the survey2, 49.5% persons were estimated to be self-employed under the Usual Principal Status (UPS) Approach followed by 30.9% as casual labour. Only 16.5% were wage/salary earners and the rest 3% covered contract workers. Under Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing sector, 46.9 per cent persons are estimated to be employed. It shows that majority of the workforce are employed in the primary sector. Studies also show that 41.9% employed persons are self-employed followed by 34.9% as casual workers, remaining 23.1% as wage/salaried employee and contract category worker for the age group 18-29 years.

NGOs Role in curbing unemployment
• India has nearly 3.4 Covid-19 and the Future of Youth Employment non-governmental organisations (NGOs), working in a variety of fields ranging from disaster relief to advocacy for marginalised and disadvantaged communities
• NGOs play an important role in curbing unemployment rate of the country by contributing different elements like including short-term training, where unemployed youths are educated in personal skills, e-skills and enterprise business. Moreover, it recognizes prior learning so that students can take courses that fill in the missing gaps in knowledge and offers placement guidelines to ensure candidates are assigned in a suitable field placement.
• They operate welfare programs in India focused on the “education for poor children, healthcare for families, skills training and livelihood for youth and community engagement through women empowerment,” according to their platform. In response to India’s youth unemployment rate and youth undertraining, underprivileged city youths are enrolled in the program and trained in business-relevant skills, including English communication, computer proficiency, business management and personal skills. In the last decade, more than 25000 young adults were taught these essential skills, and more than 15,000 trainees were placed with well-known companies by the program.
• To promote skill development in rural areas, Apprenticeship Training Scheme (ATP), Vocational Training Providers (VTP) and many other programmes were undertaken. Government has also decided to transform Public Employment Exchanges into Career Centers to provide guidance and career counselling to young people.

• Vocation courses are recognized as an important part of under-graduation and post-graduation collages. Government should emphasis in inculcating these courses in the primary level and makes it compulsory part of the curriculum so that people so that people become proficient in their early stage of life. Career Counselling is provided within the school and they reach all the students to guide them on choosing appropriate career related to their skills and interests.

Covid-19 and the Future of Youth Employment

All indicators that have come out paint the same picture—the great fall of our economy. Annual GDP growth for this fiscal (FY21) is expected to hit negative double digits. The gravity of this economic inactivity in terms of jobs now provides a glaring picture for everyone. Close to 94 lakh people have withdrawn Rs 35,445 crore from their EPF accounts in the last four months, up 33% from last year. This clearly indicates massive job losses or salary cuts. As per CMIE reports, salaried jobs grew by a meagre 1.6% in 2017-18, which registered a negligible growth of 0.1% in 2018-19. It has gone downhill ever since. The number of salaried jobs contracted by 1.8% in 2019-20. So, even before Covid kicked in, we were struggling to create salaried jobs. So far, during April-August 2020, we have lost close to 2.1 crore salaried jobs.
Unemployment among India’s youth population, mostly from impoverished communities, remains a challenge today. COVID-19 has shaken the Indian job market like much of the world, sending the unemployment rate as high as 24%. Yet, while unemployed youths in India remains high, the COVID-19 pandemic has led organizations to shift their efforts toward helping those in need.
For example, the Indian government has transformed several of its training centers into quarantine units. However, youths with healthcare training are being referred to the Ministry of Health and Welfare to help with the pandemic response.

Return to a pre-pandemic life will be slow. Still, when India is ready again to invest heavily in its large reserve of youths, there is a real promise for economic gain with a possible 2% future growth in the country’s economy.

HelpingBrainz as an NGO worked on the unemployment issue prevailing in India wherein team Helping Brainz created several WhatsApp groups and Telegram pages to post job opportunities. Many needy people are receiving employment opportunities through us. Helping Brainz also started various skill enhancement and career development programs in collaborations with organizations like Maclead Certifications and all.

– An article by Minakshi Thakar. Minakshi is a learning and skill development professional with a BIG4 wherein she dedicates her weekend with Helping Brainz by handling the human resource and the international peace projects.

Status of education in Uttar Pradesh

(Source : Firstpost, ASER)

• A fourth of Uttar Pradesh’s (UP’s) 200 million people are aged between five and 14 years – India’s largest child population – but the state has the fewest teachers per student, the poorest transition rate from primary to upper primary school and amongst the lowest learning outcomes in the country.
• UP’s literacy rate of 69.72 percent is India’s eighth lowest in the country, according to Census 2011.
• Literacy rate rose 13.45 percentage points in UP over a decade from 2001, but there are wide regional disparities: In the north-eastern district of Shrawasti, the literacy rate is 49%, while in the best performing district, Ghaziabad (in north-western UP), it is 85%, according to this report.
• UP has the worst primary school pupil-teacher ratio in India
• India’s largest state by population has the worst pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) in India, with a teacher for every 39 students at the primary level, according to the Unified-District Information System for Education (U-DISE) Flash Statistics 2015-16. The all India average is 23:1.
• UP recorded an enrolment of 25.3 million primary students (including both private and government schools) in 2015-16, taught by 665,779 teachers (even including schools where primary, upper primary and secondary co-existed), according to government education data.
• At 30 students per teacher–as prescribed by the Right to Education Act (RTE)–at the primary level, the state should have 840,000 teachers but is short by 21%, or 176,000, according to our analysis.
• UP also reported the second-highest teacher absenteeism (31%) in rural public schools among 19 surveyed states in 2010, according to this 2014 study.UP spent Rs 13,102 per elementary school student, including both primary school students (grade I to V) and upper primary school students (grade VI to VIII), according to this commentary in the Economic and Political Weekly. This is higher than the all India spending of Rs 11,252 per student.55% of students in grade III could read a grade I text in 2014, compared to 50% students in 2006; in government schools, the proportion reduced from 24% in 2006 to 13% in 2010.In UP, few attend school regularly–on average, only 55% of children enrolled were present on the days the ASER team visited primary schools in 2014, according to ASERdata.
• According to this calculation by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, based on Census 2011 data: 624,000 children, or 8.4% of the five-14 age group.

An article about Helping Brainz on “the Women Empowerment Initiatives we have conducted post The Kerala Floods” The New Indian Express.  Post the flood, the conditions of the underprivileged communities were in a bad situation wherein Helping Brainz in collaboration with Lakshmi Sreenath led Herbal Sutra, conducted 5 women empowerment and entrepreneurship campaigns in various villages in the banks of Chalakudy River, which was badly affected in Kerala Floods 2018. The ‘learn and earn’ sessions mainly aimed in providing the women with an opportunity to think and create a medium for their livelihood.