The findings of State of Working India 2023, a report released by the Azim Premji University, are ominous. This is because it reveals how employment and, consequently, social mobility continue to be linked to caste and gender hierarchies in India. In 2021, only 22% of workers from the scheduled castes were regular wage earners compared to 32% from the general category who benefitted from a steady income. As much as 40% of SC workers are still part of the unorganised sector, while the number of company owners belonging to the SCs and scheduled tribes remains anomalous compared to their percentage in the total workforce. This is true even of the smallest of firms. Data on the participation of women show a few more worrying trends. For instance, in rural areas, as the husband’s income increases, the probability of the wife being employed reduces: this shows that stereotypes, such as the male being the breadwinner, endure stubbornly. Interestingly, the report also found a direct correlation between the employment status of the mother-in-law in a household and the probability of the daughter-in-law being employed. Worryingly, SC and ST women are doubly disadvantaged — they earn only 54% of upper caste women’s pay who, in turn, earn only 76% of what men do. The most significant statistic perhaps is that a staggering 42% of graduates under 25 remain unemployed, showing that the prime minister’s dangling of the Rozgar Mela carrot is not helping the educated youth.

The general rate of unemployment has fallen to pre-pandemic levels but the most troubling inference from this report is that inequality is still deeply embedded in the nation’s economic structures in spite of policy attempts and affirmative action measures to uplift the disadvantaged classes. In the absence of robust employment generation, there is always the risk of the youth finding their energies being directed towards divisive endeavours, thereby turning themselves into foot soldiers of an authoritarian regime. If Narendra Modi’s pre-poll promises of providing employment are to be turned into reality, surveys like this must be taken seriously and their data used to tailor regular employment-generation schemes appropriately. That way, the claims of employment generation by all political dispensations can be interrogated on the basis of objective criteria.