Keynote Address by
Mr Jagmohan
Minister of Tourism and Culture, Govt. of India

At the Session 1: Turning Job Seekers into Job Creators
"Thought Leadership Conference" Special Plenary
Date: 30 October 2003
Venue: Balayogi Hall, Parliament Library Building, Parliament House, New Delhi

Distinguished friends: As you know topic of today’s discussion is how to convert job seekers into job creators. The first point which I would like to underline is, that this objective can be achieved provided we have a overall system, which response to this type of situation. What I mean is that our overall system must first create jobs of which those who are not able to get jobs out of that creation should also become creators of jobs. How do you become creators of jobs? It means you must have an enterprise, you must have n good educational system, you must be innovative and you must have a creative mind. How do you do that? It is only the system, the overall system that can promote creativity in the society, that can promote enterprise in the society; that can give some sort of an enthusiasm to the youth. For that it is absolutely necessary that we must have a sound system of economic planning, a sound system of education, a sound reformative urge to take the country forward. Without this type of atmosphere being created first it will not be possible to produce people who will be looking to the creation of jobs and getting jobs themselves. This is I think the fundamental point which we must grasp.

The second point is, in a country like India you have certain traditions. You have certain social ethos; cultural values. For example in the joint family system we have the dependencies syndrome. All those things must now change. The British government has created a system of creating clerks and everybody was looking to the government job. That tradition still hangs on. Most of the people would like to get government jobs or some public undertaking. Why do they want it - because that will give them some job security. This type of syndrome has to change. This change can be brought about only by some sort of a social and cultural revolution or social and cultural change. India has not undergone this process in my view. So many traditions continue. So many outdated notions continue. In the system which we have to create we must have a new urge to reform ourselves and to move with the times. This is the second point which I would like to underline.

The third point is we must be original and very creative in ourselves. We need not follow a system of economic planning which has been followed elsewhere. We should be looking to our problems in depth and find a solution for that.

I would like to give you an example of tourism of which I am minister. I can give you a firsthand information about that. Now tourism is a subject which creates too many jobs and it also gives you an opportunity to become innovators in this field. Few of us know that if you invest one million in some industry you will get 12 jobs; but if you invest the same amount in industry you will get 48 jobs – direct or indirect. But during the last 40 years or so we have been emphasising on other aspects of planning and tourism has been practically restricted to attracting foreign tourists. Domestic tourism has been ignored. Domestic tourism could have given lot of fillip to our economy. We have immense number of sacred places which people like to visit. We have got 3600 protected monuments which have immense beauty, immense historicity and immense heritage. We have got so much of natural heritage, wildlife, so many other attractions in this country but we have not promoted domestic tourism which we would have created jobs after jobs which would have also improved the quality of life. Whenever an attempt was made, tourism was looked in isolation, ‘alright, promote tourism by this method’. But it has to be synthesised with various other elements to produce best results. Now these are the cultural artefacts there must be a synthesise with cultural element. There must be synthesised with overall environmental factors. There must be synthesised with your clean civic life. Your tourist places will be attractive only when there is cleanliness around them and only when we set up a good system of catering, clean system of catering more people will come and your business will expand. With this view we have recently evolved a system in which tourism is not looked in isolation. Tourism is being synthesised with all those architectural heritage, all that music heritage, dancing heritage, learning heritage, intellectual heritage and also with our particular pattern of living in villages or the rural life. I will give you one example. We have recently improved Anenta. All those paintings have been properly restored and conserved. Previously if you went into the caves you could not see the paintings properly because there were no lights and people were afraid of putting lights because it may damage the paintings. Now if you go modern technology has been used, fibre optics have been used, lights are available and you can see the whole paintings. All those things have been cleaned, the slums around this caves have been relocated. All the new shopping centre and all the human activity, all the buses and vehicles 2 ½ Km away. You can only travel from that new centre to the caves through a battery operated business. It is absolutely clean environment in Ajanta. You see the river and you see the Shayadri hill in their whole great beauty and you enjoy it. All those people living in slums and their business was only from hand to mouth they have been given new shops. When I go as a tourist I feel like buying form those shops. Now even educated man would like to stand in the shops to sell and he will converse with the person in English and say "Look this is the great beauty of Ajanta, this is the great beauty of my artefacts and this is my tradition, this is my village , you can go up and reach them this is my wife working in the village who produces these things which you may like to buy’. Look at the advantages that come. If a man who wants to get a job he gets a self employed job. He is able to keep his family in tact in his village and he is very proud of it. The family members produce all the small things which he can sell in the Ajanta shops. By improving the quality of environment you would like to stay there longer. You would like to go and sit around the stream. You would like to go to the forest go up and up. Some research scholars would do some work on Ajanta paintings. After a few intervals, you create a dance and music at the foothills of Ajanta. You create those traditions at that time when the caves were made, when the paintings were done. You create some interpretation centres and say how these paintings were done. What is the meaning of these paintings? What do they convey? By this process you convey a very healthy image of India. You convey to the rest of the world India had powerful mind which produced such great technology of caves. There is a great art process that went behind those paintings. Just imagine how much advantage that it gives to the country. Apart from giving jobs, apart from creating self-confidence, apart from helping in the process of economic development you feel that India is a great country and this process can be replicated in other places and that is exactly what we are doing. We are creating hubs of culture, tourism and clean civic life. In the process creating jobs which can be manned by very ordinary individuals. They can remain where they are. They can make use of their own residences. I know in Vaishnav Devi shrine, all these ladies are working to produce ‘chunnies’. When I was the Governor there, I started this process. I am very happy to see that now every woman is able to sell ‘chunnies’ to the devotees and earn above Rs. 5000 a month apart from his other family members’ earn for different purpose. Prosperity is there. There is no movement to the cities. People are living there. When you go there you get a very good image of India’s past culture, its heritage, its religion and its values. This is the way we can rebuild the economy, we can create an environment in which the job creators will be there, the job seekers will be there and there would be sufficient jobs to everybody.

There is another sector which I would like to mention particularly when we are discussing with international audience. Whatever you may say, the fact remains the world is distributing its resources in a very unfair and very unjust way. Unless this unfairness is removed, it is not possible to solve the problems of employment in the developing countries. We will do our best, but there will be wide gap and this gap can be filled only when a fare international system is evolved.. When there is a free movement of people, not only free movement of capital, those who want to get jobs elsewhere they should be able to get it depending upon their merit, depending upon their quality, but I think there is a lopsided, on the one hand you want to have a free flow of capital and on the other hand you want to restrict the employment opportunities to those who are equally meritorious but they can get job elsewhere, you restrict that. I think it is a fundamental thing which any audience of this character must ponder over. Without that I don’t not see any great future for the developing countries. After all the data during the last 30 years clearly show the disparities have been increasing and those problems have also been mounting, the problem of distribution. This can be solved when there is really true globalisation in the true sense, not globalisation in the restricted sense.

With these words I conclude my observations and would if necessary participate in the discussions that follow.

Thank you.

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