Budget 2014: Focus on wage and self-employment opportunities

Mumbai: Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget 2014 announced a slew of self-employment schemes. The government aims to focus on creating more jobs for the youth by increasing local entrepreneurship.

The World Bank 2014 report had stated that India has one of the most rigid labour markets in the world and ‘although the regulations are meant to enhance the welfare of workers, they often have the opposite effect by encouraging firms to stay small and thus circumvent labour laws’.

Skill India programme has been introduced to train youths for jobs. Jaitley announced that 10,000 crore funds have been allocated for startup companies. As per official reports, 20 new industrial clusters will be set up soon.

Private sectors should be encouraged to recruit more employees thus contributing to the job creation sector, added Jaitley. Increase in incentives by 3% to farmers will also contribute towards bringing economic stability of the farmers in India.

The government has allocated Rs 200 crore for six new textile clusters at Bareilly, Kutch, Surat, Mysore and Bhagalpur and additional trade facilitation centre. The newly introduced employment plans aims at making more workers eligible for minimum wages and increase in the number of new start-ups.