This May Day, Know Why Your Residential Project Might Be Getting Delayed

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen on making India an export-oriented manufacturing powerhouse. But, many point out that there are not enough skilled or unskilled laborers to make the “Make in India” initiative successful. Many construction projects  in India are getting delayed due to shortage of laborers. Is your construction project being delayed for long? These might be some of the reasons:

1) Paucity of skilled labor: Your builder is probably not finding enough laborers to carry out the construction projects on time. It is a known fact that many Indian workers are not sufficiently skilled. There is an inherent shortage of skilled laborers. Skilled laborers are hesitant to work in a unorganized sector like the construction industry. Experts have long been suggesting that the government should set up more vocational training institutes to skill people.

2) Rapid urbanization: Developers are not finding enough laborers partly because rural areas are being urbanized at a more rapid pace than ever. So, laborers in rural areas do not get much incentives to shift to cities where residential projects are being developed. When rural areas were less developed, workers could earn more by moving to urban areas, but not the case.   3) Government's job-guarantee schemes: Laborers find employment generation schemes like the National Rural Employment Generation Act (NREGA) more attractive than jobs in the construction sector. The NREGA guarantees jobs to rural households for 100 days in a year. It is not surprising that schemes like the NREGA deprives more productive ventures in the construction sector of laborers because the government guarantees them jobs nearer their homes.    4) High cost of living in cities: As the cost of living in cities is higher than in rural areas, people find government job schemes tempting. The residential costs and other expenses in cities are very high. Many laborers who move to large cities find it difficult to pay rent for a decent room, and are compelled to live in slums or far from the city. This discourages many, especially skilled laborers from moving to metropolises to work in construction projects. 

One of the hidden costs of government job schemes is that they attract workers who otherwise could have contributed their labor to other high-value projects. Even many supporters of government employment-generation schemes admit that workers are often engaged in activities that serve little or no purpose. Supporters of NREGA often miss this as it is not easy to quantify the rural workers who did not migrate to cities to take up jobs in construction projects because they found employment generation schemes more lucrative. It is, however, easy to quantify rural workers who got employment under NREGA.