When a major emerging economy grows significantly you would expect job growth to follow closely. Sadly this is not the case for India. Between 2005 and 2012, India’s GDP growth was 54% but its net job growth was only 3%. There were only about 15 million net new jobs.

Factors cutting across the socio-economic and technical areas like less growth of manufacturing sectors, social unrest in areas like Kashmir, increased emphasis on artificial intelligence ex driverless cars, robotics penetration are interacting to cause jobless growth in India.

Some of the policies can be followed :-

• Appoint a National Jobs Adviser to the Prime Minister in the PMO :- The Adviser would align job growth planning with economic planning; ensure integration of the multiple but siloed job related policies across central ministries, as well as with the states; enable sharing of best practices between states, and provide a liaison between government and the private sector.
• Create a vast, integrated, national ecosystem for entrepreneurship education, mentoring and support. Entrepreneurship is about state of mind, and about having access to an ecosystem in which startup and growth ideas can be explored, not snuffed out.
• Make it easy for startups :- To actively contribute to India’s growth trajectory, we need a million startups with growth potential, with many of these outside the tech sector. ‘Startup India’ addresses many but not all the needs of entrepreneurs. Access to a national network of mentors and angel investors; and easy access to government procurement opportunities with simplified rules are essential.
• Enable growth in existing Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) :- While startups (especially digital startups) are glamorous, SMEs are the growth backbone of any nation and primary drivers of job growth. In India, 70% of the job growth during 2005-12 came from SMEs with 6 plus employees. Yet India’s policies favour micro-enterprises, defined as businesses with investment of less than Rs 25 lakh, with 1-6 employees typically, which do not drive job growth because they are neither able to invest in capital equipment nor be competitively productive.
• India’s archaic classifications of micro, small and medium businesses, based on invested capital, need to be scrapped and policies reimagined to encourage every business to grow to become a medium business, or larger, creating a more dynamic economy and more jobs.
• Launch a major Startup & Small Business Innovation Initiative (SSBI). Some 40 years ago, the US launched ‘Small Business Innovation & Research’ initiative wherein various government departments allocate funding for innovation by SMEs, selected through an open, competitive process. This has helped create thousands of new companies and millions of new, quality jobs.
• Neglecting narrow suggetions and adopting broad visionary policies like Some economists are taunting the government to get tough and change labour laws to make it easier for employers to fire their employees. This will not create more dignified and better paying livelihoods around the country, which should be the government’s goal. 
• Focusing agricultural sector :- Utilize agriculture as an engine to raise on-farm incomes and purchasing power, generate additional on-farm employment opportunities, and stimulate rural industrialization and services. These would in turn increase demand for agricultural products, manufactured goods and services throughout the economy, creating a multiplier effect that generates jobs in other sectors. 

Conclusion :

The Union government must focus on policies that will generate more dignified and sustainable livelihoods than the Indian economy is presently producing. The ideology of greater freedom for capital and investors is being confronted, globally, with demands for more fairness for all. While ensuring employers have the flexibility they need, Indian laws ensuring fair treatment of all workers must be more effective than they are. Constraints on the formation and growth of small enterprises must be reduced. Overall, social security must be provided in various forms, by skilling and retraining, health insurance, pensions, and other means, to create the conditions required for more fairness with flexibility.