Manish Sabharwal, Chairman of Teamlease Services and a member of the NITI Aayog Committee on Entrepreneurship and Skills has been interviewed by The Times of India. Asked how he would kick-start job creation in India. Mr Sabharwal pointed to six key issues:

• The Goods and Service Tax (GST),
• Make in India  (a major national program designed to transform India into a global manufacturing hub),
• The ease-of-doing business,
• Digital India (a Government initiative to integrate public sector departments and the people of India),
• Labour reform, and
• Co-operative federalism.

Sabharwal suggests the last one may be the most important; the 29 Chief Minsters [of the country states] matter more for job creation than one Prime Minster because labour markets are local. “I believe using Section 254 (2) of the Constitution (the provision used by Rajasthan to amend labour laws that allows state legislatures to amend central acts) is a huge innovation given the flawed political narrative since Independence that strong states will lead to a weak nation”.

“State chief ministers often have clearer line of sight for problems and recognize the complex reality that the government has an execution deficit, the private sector has a trust deficit and NGOs have a scale deficit. Plus, state governments control all delivery systems and plumbing changes are often easier. Gujarat was early to recognize that the massification of higher education requires the vocationalization of higher education; we set up India's first vocational university as a public private partnership with the government of Gujarat a few year ago (we have now have more than 8000 students across various degree and non-degree programmes in physical, apprentice and distance learning formats). Rajasthan was the first to converge all skill programmes into a single mission and, of course, the first to recognize that labour law reform is a job creation agenda”.

To read the full interview, click here