Ajay Banga’s Davos Jobs List — and the India It Leaves Out

 
At Davos recently, Mr Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, offered a crisp answer to one of India’s most urgent questions: where will the jobs come from?

In a panel discussion, he identified five key areas for job creation in India — infrastructure, primary health care, small farmer agriculture supported by technology and markets, tourism, and value-added manufacturing. It is a sensible list, and in many ways a familiar one. But what matters is not only what is included. It is also what remains outside the frame.

Mr Banga spoke of his roots in Punjab while emphasizing agriculture as an important engine of employment. Rightly so. Punjab has been at the forefront of India’s agricultural story — a star that fed millions across the country for more than half a century. His insistence on supporting small farmers through better markets, pricing, commodities, and the benefits of scale is timely.

To his credit, Mr Banga also moved beyond the usual economist’s obsession with GDP growth alone. Most job-creation conversations end with infrastructure, manufacturing, and aggregate numbers. By including primary health care and small-scale agriculture, he widened the lens slightly.

But only slightly.

Because here is where the precision ends.

India’s bottom economic pyramid is not supported by organised manufacturing or formal payrolls. It is supported by the unorganised sector — millions of workers spread across livelihoods that are invisible, undervalued, and often legally unrecognised. These jobs do not appear in Davos panels. They do not fit neatly into scale-loving theories of growth. And yet, they sustain the country.

The unorganised sector is frequently dismissed as inefficient or unrewarding. Worse, it is being steadily squeezed by modern economic thinking that treats informality as something to be eliminated rather than strengthened. But if unshackled, this sector could become one of India’s most democratic job engines.

That is where India’s real employment opportunities lie — hiding in plain sight.

Consider the forest economy.

The entire NTFP sector — Non-Timber Forest Produce — is slowly going underground. Prices have remained static for years, value chains are weak, and policy attention is minimal. And yet, NTFP trade continues to support some of the most vulnerable Indians. Estimates suggest that nearly 27.5 crore people, especially women, depend on NTFPs for supplementary income, while around 5 crore tribal people rely on it more heavily.

And still, public investment remains marginal. Rough calculations suggest that India invests only a few thousand crores annually in this sector, while agriculture spending runs into lakhs of crores. This imbalance is not accidental. It reflects structural neglect of livelihoods that sit outside the organised imagination.

Then there is pastoralism — another employment system missing from the national picture altogether.

Economic policy often views land as “waste” unless it is occupied by agriculture, industry, or real estate. Where does that leave pastoralists? Livestock rearers, especially nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, barely exist in mainstream policy discussions. Only recently has their identification begun through pastoralist census efforts.

Pastoralists are not backward remnants of an older economy. They are ecological and economic contributors, providing services agriculture quietly depends on — grazing management, manure cycles, biodiversity support. Yet they remain absent from serious job-creation frameworks.

India also suffers from legal and institutional exclusion of entire ways of life.

Take firewood sellers. Has anyone ever counted how many firewood-selling women exist in India? Even India’s best cities still use firewood in some form. I remember women walking into Mandla every morning between 5 am and 8 am, carrying bundles to sell. Once, I counted more than a hundred women entering from just one road.

Do these women exist in any grand economic theory? Is firewood selling even recognised as an occupation?

Similarly, charcoal-making from Prosopis juliflora — wilayati babul — survives across Rajasthan and Gujarat. These livelihoods are criticised endlessly without understanding what they mean for rural survival economies. The problem is not merely economic; it is about recognition, legality, and dignity.

Mr Banga’s Davos list is important. It is polished, globally legible, and politically safe. India certainly needs better infrastructure, stronger health systems, thriving tourism, and value-added manufacturing.

But India’s employment story cannot be built only from the top down.

The real job landscape lies elsewhere — in forests, commons, seasonal migration, informal markets, and livelihoods that do not fit into organised-sector frameworks. Recognising these sectors is not charity. It is economic realism.

India does not suffer from lack of work. It suffers from lack of visibility and investment in the work that already sustains millions.

The real question is not whether India can create jobs. It is whether India is willing to see, support, and dignify the jobs that already exist. Until then, Davos will keep offering lists — while India’s working poor will keep carrying the economy on their backs, unseen.

Here are some links for reference: 

Link to Mr Ajay banga's speech at Davos: 

https://youtu.be/ufWDWodMofI?si=KEOTPDSahsX7y21Q

Link to MoTA- 2 lakh crore size of NTFP sector

https://trifed.tribal.gov.in/node/868#:~:text=Inclusive%20development%20(Sabka%20Vikas)%20cannot,significant%20moves%20in%20this%20regard.