 Hello, you're watching Dispatches from India by People's Dispatch, a show where we bring you the major issues in the country, what Indians are talking about, and how this will affect the politics, the economy, and all aspects of society. For our first story, we bring you a close look into the state of unemployment and its devastating effects. 22 million Indians have quit the workforce the past five years, even though the working age population has increased by a massive 121 million. Just 4 in 10 people who can work want jobs and despite the drop in the labour force participation, unemployment among, for example, those aged between 20 and 24 has risen sharply. When it comes to women's participation in the labour force, the statistics are even more stark. Only one in 10 women in India is currently seeking work outside of home. What are the factors behind these troubling numbers? What are the myths around labour force participation? And are they even based on an aorta of truth? On Indira Chakravarti, a senior journalist, examines the numbers and asks the question, have Indians lost even the hope of finding work? If fewer younger people are looking for jobs, obviously the unemployment rate should drop. Because who doesn't want to hire a young person? Who wouldn't want to hire someone between the age of 20 to 24 who have a lot of enthusiasm, are willing to work long hours, work hard, and probably you can pay them less. So given that their labour force participation rate has dropped, as I said, by 11 percentage point, there should be a higher demand for people like that. Their unemployment rate should drop sharply, but here is the unemployment rate picture for them. In 2016-17, 32% of them were unemployed. Those who were looking for work. That's a massive rate, right? One out of three who was looking for work couldn't get a job. But what happened in 2021-22 when the labour force participation rate of these people has reduced, their availability reduced, their unemployment rate has risen to 48%. Half of them who look for work do not get jobs in this young age of 20 to 24. Now take the case of women. Now as I said, this has been going on for a long time because in India, women's labour force participation rate has always been pretty dismal, right? And this has been, we've been told repeatedly, even in the UPA period, that because people are getting affluent, women are withdrawing from the workforce, all right? And we can see that that's happening, affluent or not, the workforce, people from the active labour force participation rate, women used to be about 19% in 2016-17, 19% of women wanted work or were looking for work. In 2021-22, that has dropped sharply to just 11%. One would imagine that again, just as young people, the fact that only less than 10% of women or just about 10% of women actually look for work in urban areas, less than 10%, they should find it very easy to get jobs, right? But let's look at the unemployment figure here and how much more it is than men. So men's unemployment overall, right, is right now is about, about 9%. This is both urban and rural, this is in 2021-22, but that amongst women is 27%. Three times that of men, 27%. If you take urban areas, the unemployment rate amongst men is 12%. Amongst women, it is 36%. Again, three times. It is clear that women are not looking for work because they don't get work. Men can leave the village, come and work at a construction site. They can be itinerant workers, they might have to travel for two hours every day to go to work and come back from, live in the, far away from the city, work in the city and come back. Women can't do that. That is the key reason they're falling off the chart. That is the reason women are falling out of the labour force, young people are falling out of the labour force because there aren't any jobs for them. This is absolutely untrue that they're leaving the labour force because, active labour force because they want to study or because they're affluent. They simply don't have jobs that is clear from their high unemployment rate. In our next story, around 10,000 Rohingya refugees have spread the past decade trying to live their lives in the northern Indian city of Jammu. Now they face displacement again. Since last year, the Jammu and Kashmir administration, which is directed by the centres, detained more than 150 Rohingyas including women and children under the Foreigners Act. The panic and fear inspired by these arrests is prompting them once again to pack up and move on. Our reporter from Jammu and Kashmir, Ani Zargar sent his dispatch. There are around 4,000 Rohingya refugees right now living in Jammu areas of Narval and Bhatindi. But recently in the past few months, we have witnessed that at least a woman, 35-year-old woman was deported from Jammu after she was arrested and then put in a holding centre. And she left her three children and her husband behind her and she was then shifted to Myanmar. And there are around more than 235 Rohingyas currently. They have been put up in holding centres in Jammu. And the officials have told us that their documentation is complete and they might be any time deported back to their home country. And this is currently the situation of Rohingyas who are living in fear and anxiety in Jammu areas. And many of them have expressed fear and they have expressed harassment from some of the authorities who have been coming and detaining them while they are sometimes on travelling to different places or working as labourers. Some of them have also said that they might all be shifted or deported back to their home country which is where they face a persecution from the military, Hunter, the government there. And many of these have been living in Jammu since 2008. Some of them have come after 2010 and anywhere between 2012 and 2014. Since then they had been living comfortably as compared to their situation back home. And just like the 40,000 others who flew to India, who lived in different parts of West Bengal, Hyderabad and Delhi, they were also living in Jammu areas. But since past year or two their situation in Jammu particularly has been made difficult by right-wing groups who have termed their presence in Jammu areas as a threat to security situation. And there we have witnessed them, their shanties, their homes being sometimes they are catching up fire and they have not ruled out the possibilities of sabotage. And right now what is happening is that their leaders have also, their representatives have also told them not to travel, make too much, not to carry out too much travel during this time because it is when they travel that the authorities arrest them and detain them and then ultimately risk sending back, ultimately risk of deportation. And this has happened just the recent arrests, dissentions in Jammu have happened just after human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and UN have urged Indian authorities not to send these people back, not to send these communities, these people from Rohingya community back to Myanmar where they face huge persecution. But officials have been telling us that they are waiting for the government nod so as they can carry out their deportation or carry out the final process so that they can be deported back. And finally unprecedented heat waves across several Indian states, a war in Europe and attempts to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic and its lockdowns have come together to create a massive coal crisis in India. Despite the Narendra Modi government's very vocal claims on new and renewable energies, the reality is that this country of close to a billion and a half still depends on coal for over three quarters of its energy needs. It is a crisis that is economic, social and political implications. Rabir Purnikai of NewsClicks tells us what these are. Every year in summer we do have problems with supplying electricity to all the people, to all the places that need electricity. This year we again are in that problem but this seems to have been compounded by a complete mismanagement of supply of coal to the power plants. And what we are seeing now is roughly about 8 to 10 percent power cuts taking place in the all India, the grid level. But in some of the states because we have basically state distribution companies and at that level we seem to see some places power cuts up to 1 to 10 hours taking place. So that would be that is really a very serious situation that a lot of the states are facing underlying this crisis are two things. One is the fact that we have a heat wave taking place. This happens in May. This seems to have taken place a little earlier this year. But also the fact that there is a lack of coal in the power plants and compounding this is a fact that those power plants which were based on imported coal are no longer functioning but the cost of imported coal has gone up by 3 to 4 times. Now if that is so that supplying electricity to the grid for them is a huge loss because they have come earlier said they would supply it much lower cost. Those are the contracts it has so they have just stopped supplying power. So this of course is a part of this is the result of the Ukraine war that is going on at the moment. But the critical issue is that India does produce a lot of coal. So why are you unable to move the coal to the power plants? Why do the power plants have really low reserves of coal at the moment out of 175 watt plants almost 100 plants today are critical in terms of how many days of coal supply they have. And therefore the mismanagement at the level of the government seems to be neither the railways nor the coal producing companies those who mine the coals they coordinated among each other how the movement to the power plants would take place. And the key problem is the fact that the logistics of the coal supplies have collapsed and now they are stopping essentially passenger trains in order to carry coal to the power station. This is a really, really classic case of not planning for what is to happen and not maintaining logistics which is the fundamental task of the central government. Prabhir also tells us what the impact of this crisis is on the working class. Well if the power plants takes place at the rate at which they are going or if it worsens what we are going to see of course is the industry also is going to suffer. So lot of the industries which depend obviously on electricity will also shut down and that is cascading effect on the economy and on the working class of the country the working people of the country. So all we have time for today we will be back next week with more news from India until then keep watching People's Dispatch.