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Border Risk and
Unemployment Dynamics The development dynamics of the Punjab economy has witnessed two divergent trends. While the initial driving force was employment oriented strategies led by growth in agricultural and industrial sector, the later stage has shown downward trends in employment opportunities. Sixtysix per cent of the Punjab population resides in rural areas and 34 per cent in urban areas. The border states like Punjab lag behind nation’s average growth rate of employment creation and more so, in rural areas. The present study conducted by economists such as Prof Baldev Singh, Sukhwinder Singh and Jaswinder Brar of Punjabi University, Patiala, is to reconstruct conditions linked to economic, social and cultural factors to capture employment strategies, particularly in the border districts of Punjab. The state has a long active international border with Pakistan. Such sponsored studies by country’s Planning Commission is of vital importance not only from socio-economic angle, but more importantly also from the national security perspective. The research study has been weaved into eight chapters. Providing rationale, the authors dwell at reasons about the lack of attractive employment opportunities in the border areas. For instance, according to the economic statistics available, the Punjab border region alone marks 4.93 lakh unemployed youth to 5.4 lakh total unemployed registered persons in the state. The existence of such a large number of unemployed persons is a serious economic burden on the state’s economy and a border risk. The new economic policy programmes and increasing budgetary deficit of Punjab have added fuel to the already bad employment scenario in the border areas. Further, in terms of skilled deferentials, educated persons dominate the pool of the unemployed contributed by the markedly weak low level of economic-activity equilibrium. Such bleak situation warrants an urgent attention, more so for the border areas. This highly tabulated book showing comparative results of multi-approached empirical study also recommends ways to come out of the unemployment mess, amongst which, the foremost is the initiative by the government. The present strategic warfare have diminished the difference between heartlands and borders. This demands that the border areas and rural resource endowment behaviour needs a fresh look. According to the authors, the border districts of Punjab lag behind the non-border areas in the secondary activities especially in the units engaged in industrial activities at large scale, factory scale and even small scale, both in proportional weight and relatives size. Besides, such units are slow to pick up during upswing, but quick to loose during the slowdown phase, causing differential growth in two areas. The permanent solution to the unemployment problem in the frontier areas is to bring about high growth productive activities in rural Punjab. This demands the bringing up a public awareness and development of appropriate economic, demographic and social policies to upgrade the level of border regions to integrate them into the mainstream market activities. The developed world enjoys such a system. Why don’t the rural border areas in Punjab also move towards this goal? The long-term measures must aim at developing the research base through enhancing research and development (R&D) in the state, which are aimed at conquering natural barriers and applying the knowledge for the betterment of humanity that resides in such region. The book brings out significant study to mitigate unemployment crisis in border areas of Punjab having potential to create border risk. Endowed with rich bibliography, it will serve as a useful contribution to the researchers and the policy makers. |
