Whither jobs

The government vs opposition slanging match over job creation has been intensifying over the past few days, ever since Union Minister Nitin Gadkari rhetorically asked “where are the jobs” on the issue of Maratha agitation seeking job quotas. He was of course talking about government jobs, not the larger issue of employment generation in the country. Congress president Rahul Gandhi however seized on the Minister’s words to tweet sarcastically that “every Indian is asking the same question”. Thereafter, the issue was raised during the no-confidence debate in Parliament, considering that job creation was one of the major NDA poll planks in 2014. Drawing a parallel with China, Mr Gandhi said that while China gives employment to 50,000 youths per day, the figure for India is a paltry 400. Defending his government’s track record, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked how jobs will not be created in an economy witnessing high investment and faster execution of various infrastructure projects as well as burgeoning sales in key sectors like automobiles. Picking holes in opposition figures about jobless growth, the PM marshalled latest Employee Provident Fund (EPF) and National Pension Scheme (NPS) subscriber numbers, an independent survey on professional employment and sectoral sales figures. All such figures add up to indicate that over 1 crore jobs were created in the past year alone, he claimed. Significantly, the PM announced that his government will publish employment data every month. This should address a gap that observers have been pointing to — it was created due to discontinuation of annual surveys by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) after 2011-12 and Labour Bureau after 2015-16. There have been allegations that these surveys were discontinued for showing steady fall in employment rates. Figures from privately conducted surveys like the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and other organisations have been used by the opposition to corner the government on job creation, so it will be a good development if the government brings out monthly employment data as promised by the PM. In his I-Day speech this year, the PM in an obvious allusion to the latest IMF projections, spoke of the Indian economy as an elephant “waking up and beginning to run”. As the world’s sixth largest economy, India will continue on the high growth path with his government’s motto of ‘reform, perform and transform’, Mr Modi said. IMF mission chief for India Ranil Salgado has however said that while India is growing fast (7.3% in the current fiscal), it will need to clock double digit growth rates like China did. Only this will ensure creation of adequate employment opportunities, so that India “does not grow old before she grows rich”. This means India can set only so much in store by its demographic dividend, despite the likelihood of the ‘most populous country’ tag after 2022. Indian manufacturing remains a laggard (IIP was down to a mere 3.2% in May), while the government’s skilling programme is yet to pick up. Job creation will also depend on how much this government delivers on the PM’s vision of agricultural revamp and doubling farm income by 2022.