ADVERTISEMENTS:
This article throws light upon the four main features of occupational structure in India.
1. The sectorial distribution of work force as given in the census data from 1901 shows that the majority of India’s labour force is still engaged in the primary sector. It was constant at about 72 per cent from 1901 to 1971, but declined to 58.4 percent in 2001.
This implies that both during the period of the British rule and of planned economic development upto 1971, there was no change in the occupational distribution of work force. But the change in 2001 over 1971 by about 14 percentage points reflects a significant change.
2. However, within the primary sector, the proportion of cultivators declined from 50.6 per cent in 1901 to 50 per cent in 1951 and to 31.7 per cent in 2001 and of agricultural labourers increased from 16 per cent in 1901 to 19.7 per cent in 1951 to 26.7 per cent in 2001. This shows the concentration of land among few cultivators and the consequent increase in the number of agricultural workers. These changes may be attributed to land reforms since 1951.
3. The proportion of work force engaged in the secondary sector declined from 12.6 per cent in 1901 to 10.7 per cent in 1951 and increased to 16.2 per cent in 2001. It shows that with industrialisation there was significant increase in the proportion of work force engaged in the manufacturing sector with the beginning of industrialisation process since 1951.
4. The tertiary sector also shows a significant change. Its proportion of labour force increased from 15.7 per cent to 17.2 per cent in 1951, declined to 16.7 per cent in 1971, rose by 1 percentage point in 1981 but increased to 25.4 per cent in 2001. The increase between 1981 and 2001 may be attributed to the thrust in the policy relating to the tertiary sector, especially in trade and commerce, monetary, banking and IT sectors.
Conclusion:
The above analysis reveals that the occupational structure in India has remained almost static over the years. Leaving aside the period of the British rule which kept the Indian economy in a state of stagnation, there has been little shift in the occupational distribution of the work force.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
About 50 years of planned economic development has not made much impact on primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy in terms of occupational distribution. About 60 per cent of the work force is still engaged in the primary sector which is overcrowded and the pressure of population continues on land. Consequently, disguised unemployment and poverty persist.
The secondary sector has also failed to absorb more labour force despite industrialisation and urbanisation. So far as the tertiary sector is concerned, it shows that a higher proportion of work force is engaged in this sector as compared to the secondary sector.
From this, it can be concluded in terms of Clark-Kuznets thesis that India is on the path of economic development because the increase in the proportion of occupational structure of work force from the primary sector to secondary and tertiary sectors had started moving steadity since the 1990s.
Prof. V.K.R.V. Rao has compared the sectoral distribution of work force with the sectoral shares in the NDP from 1951 to 1981. We analyse it in terms of GDP from 1951 to 2001 because there is no change in his observations. Table 4 shows the shares in the GDP of the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors for the period 1951 to 2001.
A comparison of Table 4 with Table 5 reveals that the occupational change between 1951 and 1961 was in the same direction in the case of primary and secondary sectors, while it was in the opposite direction to GDP for the tertiary sector.
The occupational change in the share of the tertiary sector declined by 1.2 percentage point whereas its GDP share rose marginally by 0.9 percentage point. The occupational change between 1961 and 1971 was in the opposite direction to the GDP shares in the case of the primary and secondary sectors.
The share of the primary sector increased marginally by 6.3 percentage points while that of the secondary sector fell by 1 percentage point. On the other hand, the share of the primary sector in GDP fell by 3.4 percentage points and that of the secondary sector increased by 3.3 percentage points.
In the case of the tertiary sector, the occupational change of the work force was in the same direction as the share of this sector in GDP. It increased by 0.7 percentage point in the former and by 0.9 percentage point in the latter. For the period from 1981 to 2001, the share of the work force in the primary sector declined slowly, while the share of this sector in GDP declined sharply.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The former from 68.8 per cent to 58.4 per cent and the latter from 41.8 per cent to 23.9 per cent. In the case of the secondary sector, the occupational share increased by 2.7 percentage point and that in GDP rose by 0.4 percentage points between 1981 and 2001. The share of the work force in the tertiary sector and that of the GDP increased between 1981 and 2001. But the rise was not of the same magnitude. In the case of the former, it increased by 7.7 percentage points and in the latter 17.5 percentage points.
This analysis shows that the change in the GDP in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors has not resulted in the corresponding occupational change in these sectors. Prof. Rao explains this paradox between the distribution of GDP and occupational structure in the three sectors thus – “Taking the period as a whole (1951-81), the census data show structural retrogression in occupational terms, which is directly at variance with structural progress in terms of NDP* shares of the three sectors.
It is this which constitutes both the problem and the paradox of Indian economic development and has led to the current controversy about growth and employment and the disillusion with industrialisation as a means for increasing employment and changing the sectoral composition of the work force.
It also shows that, taking the changes in the sectoral shares of the NDP over the whole period (1951-81), productivity per worker in the primary sector has not kept pace with that in the secondary sector (and to a lesser extent, in the tertiary sector) and reinforces the controversy about the link between growth, productivity and employment”.
However, the data from 1981 to 2001 show that the occupational structure is moving in the direction of changes in the sectoral structure of GDP.