Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

PM's speech at the Shram Awards function

~I am pleased to be with you to give away the Shram Awards for the year 2001. My congratulations to all the award-winners for their exemplary commitment and dedication to work. They are ordinary people who have extraordinary accomplishments to their credit because of their single-minded pursuit of excellence through creativity and hard work. They have striven for perfection and produced amazing results, thereby making their organizations and our country proud.

In presenting these prestigious awards, we honour not only a set of outstanding workers, but also the entire working community of India. It is you, the working people of India, who keep the wheels of national progress moving. Such recognition of the role of labour in nation building is all the more necessary in the context of the economic reforms.

For us in India, recognition of the contribution of labour for individual and national growth is not an imported concept. Long before May Day became an annual occasion to acknowledge the power of labour, we in India have been extolling the worker as Vishwakarma – architect of the universe itself.

Indian tradition considers workers both as the main drivers of development, and also its principal beneficiaries. According to the Rig Veda, a worker is the prototype of Vishwakarma. He is the personification of the creative power that wields heaven and earth together. He is the supreme worker, the teacher of the science of industry, the very essence of excellence and quality in enterprise.

The Mahabharat describes Vishwakarma as ~The Lord of all the arts, executor of a thousand crafts, the carpenter of the Gods, the most eminent of artisans, the fashioner of all ornaments, on whose labour all men subsist, and whom they continually worship~.

Friends,

The times we live in differ in many ways from all the previous eras in human history. Perhaps the most crucial difference lies in the pace at which the nature of work has been changing in today’s era of liberalization and globalisation. Technology and market dynamics have together introduced the most revolutionary transformation in the way economic activities are being conducted, and the manner in which human labour conducts them.

This has posed two fundamental challenges before all countries, especially the developing ones. Firstly, how do we ensure that every able-bodied person is productively employed? Secondly, how do we reduce the disparities and inequalities between developed and developing countries, even as the two become more and more integrated and inter-dependent? The policies that we in India have been pursuing are geared to achieving these twin goals. Our philosophy of economic reforms has been -- faster growth with employment and equity.The change that this approach has brought about is already visible. In less than a decade, the number of people living below poverty line has come down to 26% -- a reduction of more than 10 percentage points. Over the last three years, over 70 lakh employment and self-employment opportunities were created each year. We would have liked this change to be faster. But there is no denying that there has been a change, and that the change has been for the better.

I believe that one of the toughest challenges before us is, how quickly we can train the new entrants and aspirants to India’s workforce to meet the needs of our domestic and export economy. If we can do this, it also presents to us the biggest opportunity for wealth creation and poverty eradication.

Recently the All India Management Association presented a report to me. It was titled ~India’s New Opportunity – 2020~. It sought to make out a case that as many as 40 million new and high value jobs can be created by enriching our professional resource base and strengthening our recent gains in the knowledge economy. The study argues that developed countries are going to experience large-scale shortage of professional manpower in the coming years due to two factors: ageing and low population growth rate. During the same period, India is set to emerge as a nation with the largest employable manpower in the world. The shortage of manpower in developed countries would require them to attract the right kind of skill sets – either through migration or by outsourcing, which is made possible by the breathtaking advances in information technology.

Thus, India is uniquely placed to take advantage of this situation by exporting its professional services – either actually or virtually. The contribution of remote services alone is expected to be anywhere between $ 100 billion and $ 300 billion, with an addition of 10-24 million jobs each year. India could become a preferred destination for medical and old-age tourism, educational services and leisure activities, apart from a wide variety of other outsourced businesses. It is for experts to examine these possibilities and chalk out policies to realize them. But what is beyond any doubt is that we in India should constantly explore new avenues of employment generation for our educated and not-so-educated youth. It is also clear that upgradation of skills and knowledge base is the key that will unlock these avenues for more employment and better quality employment.

Today, only 5 percent of the Indian labour force in the age group 20-24 have vocational skills. In contrast, the percentage in industrial countries is much higher, varying between 60 percent to 80 percent. The illiterate and literate up to the primary level of education constitute a very high proportion of the existing workforce. On the one hand, the level of educational attainment of the existing workforce is very low. On the other, educated persons without professional skills constitute nearly 70 percent of the total unemployed. Given the nearly 400-million strong labour force of India, the enormity of the problem and the resources required to tackle these issues can very well be appreciated. A major shortcoming in our educational system is that it is excessively focused on general academic education with insufficient vocational orientation. An extensive programme for improving labour market information, vocational guidance and skill training is the need of the hour. The skill level and educational attainment of the workforce determines the productivity as well as the adaptability of the working class in a changing environment. This productivity route to attaining a higher rate of growth of GDP is of particular relevance to India. We have more labour and relatively less capital. Hence, our growth strategy has to be less capital intensive and more productivity-intensive with a large employment base. In the times to come, we must create a workforce that is skilled and has the ingenuity and resourcefulness to adjust itself to the rapid changes in the labour market. That is the only way we can survive in the face of a fiercely competitive global environment. I would suggest that the Ministry of Labour launch schemes towards upgradation of skills in the country.

Till now, industry’s participation in skill training initiatives has been limited. I urge industry to substantially augment its efforts and invest more in human resource development – to meet immediate needs as well as to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges. Occupational health and safety issues have so far received inadequate attention. We must not forget that each lost life, each injury; each case of chronic disease causes untold pain and suffering for individual workers and their families and friends. These kinds of costs cannot be easily measured. But they can be described in one word – ~unacceptable~.

The working conditions in small and medium scale enterprises are far from satisfactory. As they are not in a position to have in-house Health, Safety and Environment organizations, other cost-effective methods should be developed to bring these units into the mainstream. Common facilities such as occupational health and safety centers, fire stations and effluent treatment plants could be set up by the Industry Associations and non-governmental orgnaisations to provide services on payment of small fees. Such units should also take advantage of the services being offered by the autonomous bodies and NGOs.

The issue of health and safety is a part of our larger concern for social security for workers. In the period of economic reforms, the Government and industry together have to continue to commit themselves to providing reasonable social security to workers both in the organized and, especially, in the unorganized sectors. We need to keep in mind that our workers in the unorganized sector face some of the most trying conditions in the world.

Over past few decades, the contribution of the private sector in nation building has been steadily growing. Although there have been plenty of cases of innovations, input substitutions and exemplary courage in this sector, such efforts have by and large gone unrewarded and without any national recognition. Therefore, I suggest that these too be included in the ambit of Shram Awards.

Lastly, our efforts to create a new national work culture will bear the desired fruit only if it is rooted in the age-old concept of Seva. Work becomes more than a job – indeed, work becomes worship – only when it is done with the attitude of Samaj Seva and Rashtra Seva. Let all us together launch a National Work Improvement Campaign with the central message:

~WORK FASTER. WORK BETTER. WORK FOR THE NATION~.

Once again I congratulate the Shram Award winners and their managements and express the hope that they will continue to display the qualities that have won them this prestigious national honour.

Thank you~.