A swelling middle class.

Expectations are rising among today's young people so that they are unwilling to take mundane jobs, such as frying pakodas for a living, wrote Prof A Banerjee. A rising number of youth who are underemployed "now see themselves as unemployed", while "a rising fraction of jobs offer provident fund contributions, which is a marker of a desirable job". "In a study of young men and women who had signed up for a training program leading to precisely those kinds of jobs, only about half of those who got a job offer accepted, and of those, a third quit within the first few weeks." "The jobs were too unpleasant". "They were from families who could ill-afford this -- about a third of their households owned a fridge -- but they just hated it too much." The professor suggests "a minimum income guarantee" that will stimulate rural consumption and "jump start our stuttering growth process". Rural demand for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) is expected to grow at 11-12%, which is lower than the earlier forecast of 13-14%, and volume growth will be 8.5%-9.5%. A 12% growth is hardly fizzling out. Growth in rural demand slowed because of tighter liquidity due to depressed prices of agricultural products. A government survey in 2015 showed that unemployment rate varied from 0.9% in Gujarat to 10.6% in Himachal Pradesh, 12.5% in Kerala and 19.7% in Tripura. India guarantees compulsory education to all children up to the age of 15 years but children are learning very little, wrote R Banerji. Our children need to learn "different ways of approaching problems, critical thinking and collaborative work". A study by the Azim Premji University said that 5 million men have lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018, but the real worry is that most jobs are being created for uneducated people and least for those with university degrees. The Congress has guaranteed a minimum income of Rs 72,000 for the poorest 50 million families every year. Competition for subsidies will increase our fiscal deficit, wrote R Jagannathan, but V Kaul found that it can only be good for the economy. A minimum income guarantee will increase consumption among the poor but Prof Banerjee does not explain how higher sales of toothpaste and soap will create more jobs. Using possession of cars and two-wheelers as parameters, India's middle class would be around 40% of the population and, at 13.7%, the Rural Middle Class is the single largest category, wrote Ramanathan and Ramanathan. Which maybe why young people from these families refuse jobs they do not like. But is that a reason for income guarantee?