Anything that requires licenses and permissions seems to pass if it comes with the tag line ‘will generate employment for locals.’ Whether or not it’s the truth, this is the way consent is manufactured for nefarious ventures. But Goans are getting smarter with experience. And there has been plenty of experience of promises gone awry. We now know that projected employment figures are inflated, if presented, and the principle of jobs for locals a priori in enterprises located on public land and supported by government subsidies has almost never been upheld. We also know that illegal structures violating Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) and other social and environmental norms will stand defiantly un-demolished, despite Supreme Court judgements, thanks to the fig-leaf of ‘jobs for locals.’ A long list of large-scale hotels and recreation zones for the rich have been approved even though they are known to slash our hills, reduce our forest cover, destroy our mangroves, pollute our rivers, and threaten our eco-system in the haloed name of ‘jobs.’
It is true that Goa has a grim employment problem. Based on the latest census data, there are 1.10 lakh unemployed in Goa and the Economic Survey of Goa 2013-2014 reports less than 40 percent of the population as “workers”. However, the problem is deeper than that. Narrow definitions of unemployment can make these figures almost meaningless and indeed, suspect. If confined only to those registered at the employment exchange, unemployment statistics reflect an under-count. They also leave out people in ‘disguised unemployment’ or under-employment. They omit those in casual, temporary, part-time and seasonal employment, who cannot make a decent living from their jobs and live in serious economic insecurity. Through spurious statistics, a low unemployment rate can be artificially maintained while the poverty rate continues to rise.
While some jobs are indeed generated by inward investment in the state, they may not match the quantity promised. What Goa is experiencing along with the rest of India is economic growth driven by capital markets and capital intensive activities that do not automatically generate ample employment even when they reflect positively on the gross domestic product (GDP). In reality, they constitute the paradox of ‘jobless growth.’
An open secret in Goa and beyond, moreover, is the downward shift from formal employment and a decent standard of living to the informalisation of employment. Instead of regular, permanent posts that allow people to plan their economic future, job advertisements announce temporary, contractual posts. These deny workers the full advantage of employment such as decent wages, statutory benefits and legal protection from unfair dismissals. The widespread nature of this shift has led the International Labour Organization (ILO) to refer to such employment as precarious jobs. A large chunk of precariousness in India is related to informal and contract work that is common even in perennial and essential services, such as security, which the law theoretically protects from casualisation. We see this in the public sector as well as the private sector in Goa.
Large, star hotels seem to be chief culprits of this trend. Hotel employment in Goa is based on a two-tier system with a regular and precarious workforce. Regular hotel employees have legally mandated pay scales with annual increments and gratuity, along with a host of other benefits. But they are a minority among hotel workers in Goa. The pattern set by hotels is to employ recent graduates of vocational institutes as apprentices and trainees, and then extend their tenuous position into a probationary period. This way, hotel staff, usually comprising young precarious workers, is paid only a ‘stipend’ for an extended period of time. They continue on these low wages until they quit or move on to better jobs, typically overseas or on cruise ships. How ironic in a tourism-abundant state!
Precarious workers constitute the majority of the star-hotel workforce in Goa. Employment through labour agencies (‘contractors’) and on fixed term contracts (FTCs) is endemic in the hotel industry. Besides housekeeping and room services which are essential to the hotel ‘product,’ there are a range of other services that are outsourced to third-party agencies. These include: lawn maintenance, lifeguards and pool attendants, food and beverages section, security, beauty parlours, health spas and much more. At a Five Star Deluxe hotel in South Goa that employed 680 staff in total, for example, only 250 were regular employees. Another 200 workers were hired through several labour contractors and 150 were on one-year renewable fixed term contracts, while the remaining 80 were called ‘Executives’.
Bad jobs are not worth the sale of our land, the destruction of our natural resources and the beggaring of our collective culture. Moreover, in light of the persistent growth of unemployment parallel with the expansion of the tourism sector in Goa, a report published by the Confederation of Indian Industry suggests that migrants have benefited more than locals from the employment opportunities generated in the tourism sector.
Local experience so far justifies great scepticism when an industrial initiative is proposed. How many and what kind of jobs? At what and whose cost? So far, the emphasis on economic growth ‘at all cost’ has led to gratuitous dependence on unsustainable industries such as mining and mass tourism as well as on large economic actors. It is workers, particularly young, first-generation industrial workers, who bear the brunt of this faulty policy.
What we need is a change of paradigm in economic strategy to stimulate labour intensive, green industries that provide secure, well-paid employment for Goans. If more attention and support were provided to small and medium-sized enterprises, the effect on overall economic growth and unemployment reduction would be enormous. Anything else that promises jobs must first pass the scam test.
(Dr. Anibel Ferus-Comelo is a policy
analyst trained in sociology and
economic geography, London).
