Future of Jobs in India

In India, after agriculture sector, the Construction sector contributes the most to the economic
activity and provides jobs to over 35 million people. Construction sector would therefore be a key
growth enabler for the country and hence we propose to create jobs in the future by focussing on
this sector. The construction industry comprises of the following sub-areas:

Construction Industry

Real Estate Infrastructure

Utilities Urban Transportation

Residential Infrastructure

Commercial Power
Railways
Irrigation
Special Economic Zone Civil Aviation

Roadways

Ports

We propose a two dimensional view for creating employment opportunities – Demand side and
supply side. Demand side view talks about creating new projects which would then require
additional human resource. The supply side talks about ensuring the availability of this human
capital as and when the need arises.

In construction industry, the main roles comprise of Project Managers, Projects design, project
planning & scheduling, project procurement, Engineers, Supervisors, Foremen, Accounts / Billing /
Stores, other support functions, HR, Admin, Finance, Communications and IT. For all these roles the
overall educational qualifications range from Ph. D/ Research/ CA/MBA, Engineers, Diploma or
equivalent certification by other agencies, ITI and other vocational courses, to 10th Standard or
below. Thus the construction industry has huge potential to provide jobs to people at all educational
levels.

We propose that the companies involved in the construction sector should organize workshops in
the schools and colleges to make the students aware of the construction sector and arouse their
interest. All those students who show interest and meet the minimum possible expectations can be
offered internships or live projects to better understand the work. Thus the candidates can be
directly offered permanent positions in the organization based on their performance, level of
education, skills and interest. Since the students would be working with the organization from the
beginning, they would not require any sophisticated training.

Currently all the candidates who transform from campus to corporate life are not employable and
lack in one aspect or the other like project management skills, inventory management, planning and
scheduling skills, legal knowledge of the sector, technological know-hows etc. This problem will be
automatically resolved as the candidates who have been associated with the company have deep
knowledge of the sector and fulfil its requirements.

The companies can collaborate with the educational institutions and offer an elective related to the
constructions sector which can be taught to the interested students by the industry experts
themselves. Thus the supply side problem can be solved.

Demand side problem requires efforts to increase the need of the human resource for the above
roles having the above mentioned educational qualifications. One such effort can be in the direction
of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Housing for All Scheme. To achieve this mission, we propose that
the government should initiate a campaign (as effective as Make in India) inviting FDI and FII for
investment in the construction sector and help achieve the goal of the scheme. Providing home to
such a large population in India will create immense number of job opportunities.

In the Union Budget 2017, the government has allocated huge amounts for transportation sector as
a whole, including rail, roads and shipping etc. Apart from major allocations to irrigation projects,
the government has also proposed higher investment in affordable housing. We propose that the
government should provide even more funds for these activities in the upcoming union budgets.

The government can also issue tax free bonds for inviting public investment. The private
construction companies should also be allowed to do the same to increase their scale of the
projects.

The government has passed Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act or RERA. This would
facilitate greater volumes of domestic as well as foreign investment flows into the sector. We
propose that the government should expedite the process of creating state-level authorities for
effective implementation of the act. We further propose that the government should further ease
the process of registration, permits etc. and reduce the amount of efforts in terms of time and
money.

Moreover the Indian construction companies should collaborate with Russian, Malaysian and
Chinese construction companies and adapt to the innovative technological know-hows which will
bring more efficiency and reduce costs to a great extent.

We also propose that the government should provide a lot of benefits to the construction companies
like exemption in taxes, duty free imports, concession in fees for government approvals etc. which
will give further boost to the construction sector.

Submitted by:

1. Ajay Singla

2. Amber Gupta