Punjab govt’s Ghar Ghar Rozgar Yojana employers’ meet begins

Ruchika Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 5

The Punjab government’s ambitious Ghar Ghar Rozgar Yojana employers’ meet began at Indian School of Business (ISB), Mohali, on Tuesday.

The idea of the meet is to seek feedback from the industry on their requirement for manpower. The government is taking this feedback so that they can frame their policies, especially on skilling youth, according to industry needs.

Industry doyens from the region led by SP Oswal, Rajinder Gupta, Sandeep Jain, among others, and Punjab government ministers led by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal are present on the occasion.                        

Speaking on the occasion, Manpreet said corruption and unemployment are the biggest enemies of mankind. “We are the make generation of Punjab. So we need to rebuild Punjab by creating an economically robust Punjab by working collectively,” he told the industrialists present on the occasion.

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Isher Judge Ahluwalia said unemployment is the most challenging problem faced by Punjab. Even as India grew at a robust growth rate, employment was an issue. “According to the survey by Labour Bureau, unemployment rate is 16.6 per cent as compared to 10 per cent for India as a whole. It’s because economic growth in Punjab has been very slow. Punjab set a benchmark for growth in India, but it missed the bus in 1990s, when it failed to create an enabling environment for attracting private investment and employment,” she said.                       

She said Punjab needed to create enabling environment, infrastructure and world-class cities to attract investment. Development has to be a holistic process. “The Ghar Ghar Rozgar is an emergency step. But you (referring to Punjab) need to do much more to attract private investment in thrust areas like textiles and logistics,” she said, adding that public-private partnership in infrastructure building would be the ideal way to go ahead in Punjab.

Home-grown IT entrepreneur, Dr PJ Singh, MD of Tynor Orthotics, said the need of the hour is to metamorphose small businesses into big ones. He recommended businesses to try e-commerce, which would help the companies grow.                      

He also recommended a paradigm shift in education sector, by providing e-education from world-class business schools; he also recommended mentoring of young entrepreneurs and start-ups by big business houses.                                 

Bhavdeep Sardana, who is creating one of the biggest food parks in Phagwara, asked the Punjab government to set up clusters of specific industry; ensure backward and forward linkages for the food processing industry; and encourage contract farming. When the businesses grew, they would also go in for CSR in areas around, he said.                       

Sandeep Jain, executive director, Monte Carlo, talked of labour shortages and need for promoting homegrown brands.                       

Krish Iyer, CEO of Walmart India, said retail drove consumption and consumption drove growth. “Punjab is a big consumption state, so there is immense scope for growth.” He asked the Punjab government to bring a retail policy. “GST had created a borderless country. Logistics and warehousing, along with retail, will drive growth, especially in a food-growing state like Punjab. Punjab should continue its focus on ease-of-doing business,” he said.

The company has opened five cash and carry stores in the state and planned to open 10 more, including two more in Ludhiana and one in Amritsar.

Sarvjit Singh Samra, who has set up the Capital Small Finance Bank, said he had a policy of recruiting locally available talent. His bank recently graduated from being a local area bank to a small finance bank that had 77 branches. He said he would be adding 30 branches this year, and would be recruiting 3,500 by 2022. The attrition rate in the bank is nil as they recruit local youth,” he said.