The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court recently voiced its concern over ‘rising’ unemployment in India and also expressed ‘distress’ over the citizens’ ‘falling’ standards of living. The HC accordingly emphasised on the need to generate employment and provide at least one job per family. A single-judge bench of Justice Ravindra Ghuge said, “It cannot be ignored that unemployment in India is growing at a fast pace. Uncontrolled growth of population is the primary cause for this. It is further distressing and highly disturbing to notice that the standard of living of the major chunk of the Indian population is falling with the ever growing population and the rising cost of living.” The bench added that people were ‘desperately’ in search of employment and thus “creating more employment opportunities in the urban as well as the rural areas, is the need of the hour.” He said, “Self-employment generating schemes have to be launched for unemployed youth.” The observations were made while hearing a batch of petitions filed by few people challenging the action of cancelling their kerosene hakwer licences. The Deputy Commissioner of Supply, Aurangabad, had cancelled their licences after finding that these men were carrying out ‘proxy’ business as they had employed other persons to sell kerosene. These petitioners, were ‘financially’ sound and had employed some poor persons to sell kerosene. Having considered the case, Justice Ghuge rejected the pleas, observing, “Can this country afford to have businessmen or employed/salaried persons, obtain kerosene licenses and earn additional income, by conducting sale of kerosene, by proxy. If a really needy and poor person is granted such a license, he would be able to feed his family with two square meals.” Justice Ghuge said India cannot afford to allow people to run businesses on proxy means. He further stressed on the need to create at least one job per family to ensure each person had a source of livelihood. “This country cannot afford to grant licenses to operate business by proxy. What is required is to generate one job per family,” Justice Ghuge said, adding, “In the present case, the state authorities have rightly acted to halt the unethical conduct of these petitioners who had violated the terms and conditions of their licenses. Thus, the action taken against them cannot be termed as perverse and accordingly, these petitions are dismissed.”