Education & Employment should become Global Responsibility – Inequality a Global Shame

The World has come to understand it is difficult to manage Deflation than inflation. We love to have inflation. Deflation seems to be deadly and the whole world is not happy about oil at 40USD or Copper coming down by 30% in a year or Gold hitting the bottom. The pain of deleverage has hit everybody. Understandably, Country like India, which stands to benefit the most out of falling commodities, remains to be Promising but lacks the performance in terms of growth.

Looking beyond macro economics, lack of education and unemployment are two great factors which are pulling the global economic growth. Irrespective of the size of the economy, the unemployment levels are alarming and most of the economies are understating their numbers. Lack of education and higher levels of poverty in many African and Asian countries add to the problem.

We need to declare Education and Employment as a Global Responsibility. Every living global citizen should have Education and Employment as birth right. People who are below the poverty line who cannot afford to have basic education and thus are not employable should be treated as global citizen and a Global Prosperity Fund has to be created to achieve basic education, skill development and employment for such deprived people.

While it is understandable that every country is working hard towards eradicating poverty and achieving education to all and full employment, still lot of internal pulls and pressures and economic conditions lead to failure on such initiatives.

Global Prosperity Fund will have its corpus built on contribution from every member country depending upon the size of their economy, need for education and employment for its people etc.,

GPF prime responsibility will be to absorb, people BPL (Below the Poverty Line) and those who are economically deprived of education and employment, across all countries and provide them with basic education and specific skills and make them a productive asset for the world. GPF will have to build its infrastructure needed for providing education and skill development and should become a source of supply of productive labor force across the world based on demand – supply conditions.

The objective of GPF should be Basic Education, Skill Development and Full Employment. One of the major problems which the world is facing at any point of time is Terrorism and trillions of money is being spent to combat terrorism. World wide it has been accepted that the major cause for terrorism has been lack of employment.

Once the burden of education and employment becomes a global responsibility, the respective economies can become productive in terms of focusing on development and growth. Every country will be benefitted if GPF can focus and achieve these two critical issues. Then the world will be better off in terms of

·         Inclusive Growth

·         Higher Productivity

·         Reducing Inequality

·         Innovation

·         People Empowerment

·         Higher Per capita income

·         Savings on Social Security

·         Eliminate Demography risk

·         Eliminate Terrorism

While we need to appreciate the roles of IMF, WB and UN on their initiative to combat Poverty and bringing about education awareness, it is not enough and it has been slow in progress. World Bank in its recent report has said it will take up to 2030 to make the world free of extreme poverty. This can delay inclusive growth by another generation.

By making GPF, functionally responsible for bringing full education and employment, we can actually fast track the process and make it achievable before a decade. We can use IOT and digital space to make education reach those who cannot afford and make them be part of the inclusive growth.

Cost of labor has been a major factor which is bothering the economic growth across the world. If we can achieve giving basic education and skill development to deprived people across the world, that will lead to more supply of productive labor thereby reducing the cost of labor.  Also Demographic mismatch can be handled better by bringing equilibrium on people resource across the world.

Enabling every nation to achieve full employment and effective use of human resources can transform the global growth model completely. We can neutralize the effects of Inflation and Deflation with lower cost of labor and higher productivity.

On the one side we will be seeing new technologies, IOT and Automation replacing people on many mundane jobs, education will help individuals at the bottom of the pyramid to look for newer opportunities elsewhere.

GPF should run independently by eminent personalities having impeccable record on Integrity, Ethics and Governance and there should not be any interference from any nation except for the fact that they have the right, as a contributing country, to measure the performance of their employment and education numbers.

It’s a global shame to have poverty persisting in the world, which is dominated by modern technological advancements. Recent global turmoil has made the globalization a failed concept and that was because of the skewed capitalist policies. Neither is it fact that, socialism can bring equilibrium.

We strongly believe making, Education, Skill Development and Employment, mandatory for all living citizens can only bring inclusive growth.

It is possible, if it is made a global responsibility, and we wish it is not a wishful thinking.    

T Margabandhu

M/s Marggo India