Health and Unemployment

Health 

The health of a person aids him in realizing their potential and the magnitude of fighting illness. To know one’s well-being, health is an indispensable base and improvement in the health status of the population has been the priority.

Various steps by the Government to promote health

• Our national policy aims to update the availability of healthcare, family welfare, and nutritional service with focusing especially on the underprivileged segment of the population.
• Vast health infrastructure and the required manpower at primary, secondary and tertiary sectors in Government and the private sector have been developed. 
• Increase in life expectancy and improvement in childcare are useful in assessing the future progress
• Increase in longevity of life is an indicator of good quality of life
• Reduction in infant mortality involves the protection of children from infection, ensuring the nutrition of both the mother and the child, and childcare.

Impact of Government Initiatives 

• There was an increase in life expectancy to over 69.66 years in 2019. 
• The infant mortality rate (IMR) has decreased from 147 in 1951 to 29.07 in 2020. 
• A drop in the birth rates seen to 17.163 and death rates to 7.3 within the same duration of time.

Challenges Ahead and Solutions

• There are many places in India which do not have even the basic health facilities, hence the government must aim at providing these basic facilities to the people at affordable rates.
• Institutions like medical colleges and healthcare centers, inter-state differences remain. For example, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have the most medical colleges. The government must aim at building more medical colleges in various states.

Unemployment 

Unemployment is a condition where the employable population is not able to get the jobs and earn wages for their livelihood. Unemployment tends to increase economic overload and dependence of the unemployed on the working population increases. When a family cannot maintain the bare minimum level of facilities, there tends to be a general decline in their health. Hence, it can be concluded that unemployment has a detrimental impact on the overall growth of an economy. Moreso in the case of India, unemployment exists in both rural and urban areas and can be classified into three types.  

Types of Unemployment

• Disguised unemployment is a condition where people seem to be employed but actually, they are unemployed, like in the case of the agricultural sector, where the actual requirement is ten people, but fifteen people are engaged in doing that job and most of them are family members, so they seem disguised as unemployed. 
• Seasonal unemployment is a condition when people are not able to find work for some part of the year, for example, in the agriculture field, people involved in agricultural activities stay unemployed during the off season and hence are not able to support their families.
• In cities, there is also educated unemployment found due to lack of skills and opportunities. The manpower condition is looked at paradoxically as the surplus of manpower in certain categories coexisting with a workforce shortage in others. Unemployment exists among technically certified people on the one hand, while there is a scarcity of technical skills needed for economic growth.

Different aspects of India’s Unemployment

• Statistically, the unemployment rate is low. 
• Employment structure is distinguished in the primary sector by self-employment. Also, disguised unemployment is prevalent in this sector. 
• The hardship of unemployment in the rural sector is decreased by work-sharing in the field and the raised produce. But the family’s poverty does not reduce; slowly, surplus labour from every household inclines to move from the village in search of jobs. 

Problems arising from Unemployment

• Leads to the wastage of human resources. 
• In the working population, the dependency of the unemployed increases.
• It adversely affects the quality of life of an individual as well as of society.
• When a family is supposed to live on an uncovered resource standard, there is an overall reduction in its well-being status and rising withdrawal from the educational system.
• The overall growth of an economy has a detrimental impact.
• An increase in unemployment is an index of a depressed economy. 

Conclusion

Health of the people of a nation is an indispensable base to determine the quality of their life and improvement in the health status of the population has been the priority. Health is one of the factors that is directly proportional to the economic development of the country. If the health infrastructure of a country is well developed then the country becomes more economically developed. Unemployment is an obstacle in the development of any nation, where the youth of a country is unable to find appropriate employment and it can only be reduced when the population is skilled to perform various economic activities. Skill development and many vocational programmes run by the government to reduce the unemployment in the country.