The Rise of Cockroaches

The Widening Gap Between Education and India's Labour Market: Dr. A. Kalaiyarasan on whether a degree still pays in India.
About this Event

The recent youth upsurge led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) reflects growing discontent over poor educational outcomes, precarious employment, and stagnant wages in India. This paper examines how the transition from education to employment has changed in the last three decades amid the rapid expansion of schooling and tertiary education. The paper addresses two questions - how much does education pay in India, whether returns to education have declined, and how many jobs that each additional unit of economic growth generates. Using longitudinal datasets, it estimates returns to education across levels of education over time, employment elasticity across sectors, and the changing capital–labour intensity India’s economy. The findings suggest that the college premium, while still high, has been declining, making the middle-class dream increasingly elusive in India.

Bio:

Dr. A. Kalaiyarasan is an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). He was previously with the Planning Commission (NITI Aayog) of India, Institute of Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), Delhi, He was also a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, a Visiting Assistant Professor and Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs (WIIPA), Brown University, a research affiliate at the South Asia Institute, Harvard University, and Visiting Fellow at IIT-Bombay. His works among others include The Dravidian Model: Interpreting Political Economy of Tamil Nadu, which he co-authored, was published by the Cambridge University Press. His research focuses on the political economy of development, Labour Market and structural inequalities in the Global South.
The talk is presented by the Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) at UBC.