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While the overall unemployment rate was reported at 2.6% amongst the over 15 years age population, for post graduates, it was 8.9%, for graduates 8.7% and for diploma or certificate holders 7.4%. (Labour Bureau)

Unemployment among skilled engineers (other than civil, computer) – 25%, civil engineers – 11%, textile designers – 17%, hotel mgmt. – 14%, beautician, hairdressing – 19%, fitter – 13%, mechanist – 14%, office worker – 14%.(Labour Bureau)

According to the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC), about 30 per cent of rural house holds are landless and derive a major part of their income from manual, casual labour.  About 23.5 percent of rural households are having no literate adults about the age of 25.  About 36 per cent of the 884 million people in rural India are illiterate. This is higher than the 32 per cent recorded by the Census of India 2011.
Of the 64 per cent  literate rural Indians, a more than a fifth have not even completed primary school. The SECC also found that only 5.4 per cent of rural India has completed high school with a mere 3.4 per cent  having graduated from college.
This poor state of rural education is reflected in the fact that 23.5 per cent of rural households had no adults above the age of 25 who are literate – one of the categories of deprivation measured by the SECC.
These numbers reiterate the poor quality of education being provided in rural India and the high drop-out rate, as brought up repeatedly by the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) in rural India by Pratham.
According to ASER, 96 per cent of children aged 6-14 are enrolled in schools, but the fact that 36 per cent of rural Indians are illiterate points towards poor education quality, a high drop-out rate, or both.

Fifteen people commit suicide every hour in India, shows the most recent data by the National Crime Records Bureau. Of these, around 17 per cent are housewives.
According to the NCRB data for 2013, the latest available year,  1.3 lakh people committed suicide that year. Among suicides by women, a whopping 51.4 per cent are committed by housewives (almost 23,000).

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Out of 133 countries rated on indicators of well-being such as health, water and sanitation, personal safety, access to opportunity, tolerance, inclusion, personal freedom and choice India has secured the 101th place. Even Nepal and Bangladesh rank higher than India on the Social Progress Index (SPI) ratings. On the parameter ‘Tolerance and inclusion’ India ranks 128th and is at the 120th place on ‘health and wellness’ that, says economist and executive director of the SPI, Michael Green, is the toughest parameter for a country to excel at.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, in the US, the average income of the richest 10 per cent is 16 times as large as the poorest ten per cent. 

The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $ 110 trillion. That is 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

According to the Oxfam report on global wealth, almost half of the world’s wealth is owned by just one per cent of the population.
 

Unemployment continues at a high level of 8.4 per cent in the developed capitalist countries, according to the World Economic Studies and Prospects of the United Nations.

Contractualisation, casualisation and outsourcing of work are the methods by which there is intensified exploitation of labour. The share of contract workers in total organised employment increased from 10.54 per cent in 1995-96 to 25.7 per cent by 2009-10. Home-based workers, mainly women, to whom companies outsource work are paid a pittance as piece-rate wages. The “scheme” workers employed in the various schemes of the government are paid a nominal honorarium and denied all statutory benefits. A large segment of the unorganized sector are migrant workers whose plight is the worst with miserable working conditions based on daily wage labour and no social security.