A Million Green Jobs in India? Sounds Great, for Many Reasons

“About one million green jobs will open up in India over next two years” read a recent news item from The Economic Times. A million is a lot of jobs, so I thought I’d dig up a bit on this domain, for two reasons: One, I am confident that unlike the software jobs during the IT revolution that benefitted mostly the middle class, the jobs from the green revolution will benefit many sections in the bottom of the pyramid.

The ET article goes on to give some details about what green jobs are: “Green jobs, as defined by UNEP, refers to work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development or administrative activities that contribute to preserving environmental quality, and help in protecting the ecosystem and biodiversity. They may include architects designing energy-efficient buildings, organic farmers in villages, environmental engineers or even plumbers installing water-recycle systems.”

Sure, some of the above jobs are still pretty “intellectual” and white-collar in nature; but I like the fact that there are going to be jobs for plumbers, organic farmers and blokes who go around installing a whole lot of stuff – be they for retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient or making our sewage and wastewater systems more clean.

And I am glad when I realize that many green jobs will open up in solar, wind, hydro and biomass segments, and these are jobs that will not be in the cities but distributed over many rural and semi-urban areas. (MNRE had estimated that India will require about 100,000 skilled jobs by 2022 for solar alone if the targets in the National Solar Mission were to be achieved)

Well, you got to go to where there is a river to put up a small hydro plant and to where tons of biomass are available (or atleast close to that place) to put up a biomass plant. This means thousands of jobs to villagers, reduction of poverty and hopefully some amount of reversing of the increasing migration from villages to the cities.

I like the way the green movement is shaping up, yep.

PS: You might also be interested in reading about green courses that are being planned to support the growth in green industry.

PS2: Here’s a nice article on how clean technology can benefit the bottom of pyramid in India and at the same time presents a good business opportunity. And the full report from World Resources Institute for which the article provides a summary.