A group of senior industry leaders and policy experts in India has launched Mission Hundred Million Jobs.
As the name suggests, the decade-long initiative aims to create 100 million jobs in India over the span of ten years. The initiative came about due to weak employment growth within the country despite the expanding economy. Harish Mehta, Co-Founder of Nasscom, announced the initiative alongside other industry giants like AJ Patel, Founder of network TiE and K Yatish Rajawat, Founder of the Centre for Innovation in Public Policy.
The initiative is a non-profit effort in collaboration with the Centre for Innovation in Public Policy. Mission Hundred Million Jobs will work with policymakers, entrepreneurs and educators to translate its employment targets into sustained outcomes on the ground.
With India adding about 12 million people each year to its working-age population, the country needs to create 8 to 9 million jobs annually to keep up with the employment demand and take advantage of the phenomenon. However, employment growth in India seems to be lagging behind, especially in areas like manufacturing ,where automation and AI are leading to a decrease in entry-level roles.
The purpose of Mission Hundred Million Jobs is to address this very gap between employment demand and supply. The initiative will be focusing on entrepreneurship, reskilling and the expansion of micro, small and medium enterprises. As per Mehta, the aim is to strengthen entrepreneurs and MSMEs, positioning them as job creators rather than job seekers.
Small and micro enterprises make up about 30% of India’s GDP and provide employment to a significant number of people in India. As per Patel, scaling such businesses beyond major cities will help in further job creation. He pointed out that a wider geographic spread is essential to sustain employment growth of nearly 9 million jobs a year.
Rajawat added that employment has become a “systems challenge” and that meaningful progress can only be achieved by changes in the mindset of government, business and civil society. People like N.R. Narayana Murthy (Infosys Founder), Rajiv Kumar (ex-NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman), Rajat Gupta (ex-McKinsey Senior Partner), and Srikanth Velamakanni (Fractal Co-Founder) have also signed the initiative charter, demonstrating their support for the aims of Mission Hundred Million Jobs.
