India witnessing 'jobless' growth: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Expressing concern over "jobless" growth in India and too many "stifling" regulations, biotechnology entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has called for formulation of pragmatic and visionary polices to create new employment opportunities.

"Yes, we are witnessing jobless growth (in India) but that's not because of automation. It's because of poor industrial and agricultural policies that are not creating infrastructure development, manufacturing and services jobs," she told PTI.

The Chairperson and MD of Biocon Ltd said restrictive e-regulations that try to protect conventional bricks and mortar jobs are an example of this.

"Unions are pushing back and governments are yielding. Until pragmatism is enforced we are likely to miss the opportunity of creating new jobs based on changing business models. One bright spark is the start-up culture," she said.

Biocon was rated among the world's top 10 employers in the biotechnology industry by an international science magazine last month.

Mazumdar-Shaw was recently conferred with the highest French civil distinction, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) in recognition of her outstanding contribution and dedication to biosciences and innovative research in the field.

India, she said, needs pragmatic and visionary e-regulations that can unleash the power of e-commerce.

"We need to formulate policies that incentivise private sector to invest in mega infrastructure projects. We need to focus on universal healthcare and education for all that will create a large number of jobs", Mazumdar-Shaw said.

"There are too many regulations that are stifling growth as indicated by our poor showing on the world index of ease of doing business," she said.

In the World Bank's latest 'Doing Business' report, India continues to rank low at 130th position in terms of ease of doing business, with the country seeing little or no improvement in dealing with construction permits, getting credit and other parameters.

Mazumdar-Shaw also said that farm income in India obviously needs to go up, but technology would play a key role in this too.

"Creating unproductive jobs in agriculture is not the way to go. Mechanisation and agri-biotech are key to raising agricultural productivity and prosperity," she said.