After Congress Mukt Bharat, Is India Heading Towards Job Mukt Bharat?

It comes as no surprise to learn that B-Tech Degree holders are applying for peon posts these days. Unemployment skyrocketed in 2017-18 and was at a 45 year high, at 6.1% as per the periodic labour survey of the government agency NSSO. This report was leaked by the media since the government had been hiding it for a few years.

As per the report, unemployment in urban India stood at 7.8 % which is where the BJP gets most of its support from. Then, in rural India, it stood at 5.3%. Labour force participation also shows a downfall as the proportion of people in the 16-64 age group looking for work this has reduced from 43% in 2004-5 to 39.5% in 2011-12, and further reduced down to 36.9% in 2017-18.

Ever-Growing Job Crisis:

This data suggests a major job crisis under, not just the NDA regime, but also under the previous UPA regime.

In Economics, there is a concept called Phillips curve which says that unemployment and inflation are inversely proportional to each other and in 2013 inflation remained high, so unemployment remained low. This time, inflation is low and unemployment is high. Moreover,  we can’t ignore the fact that high inflation was the prime reason for Congress to be voted out of power in 2014.

Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy:

Earlier, people only had to rely upon government data but in recent years, the Centre for Monitoring Indian economy, a private establishment, has been tracking employment using a very large sample. This has shown unemployment rising very high to 7.4% in December 2018 and 1.5 million people lost their jobs during January-April 2017. Critics said this was too high to be true.

All the more worrisome data is for the youngsters, those who majorly voted for Narendra Modi. As India is considered the country of the youth, between 2011-12 and 2017-18, the unemployment of youth in the 15-29 age group shot up from 8.1% to 18.7% for male and from 13.1% to 27.2% for females.

Claims On New Jobs: A Myth

Job creation was Narendra Modi’s biggest election promise in the 2014 general elections, but the data suggests that the tall promise he made in 2014 failed miserably.

Government claiming that the job crisis is just a data crisis will not help the current unemployment situation, there is a significant decline on monthly basis and government negligence will only aggravate the current crisis, the government is betting hard on EPFO, but EPFO enrolment largely indicates the conversion of the informally-employed workforce into formal employment. It can only be used to measure the extent of the formalisation of the workforce.

Jobless Growth Of India:

It comes as a paradox to the Indian economy that India has a growth rate of 7% but has high unemployment.

Policy Paralysis:

Government formulated some policies as digital India, startup India, skill India, and Make in India does not make any significant enhancement in terms of job creation, and investment has come down, bank credit is growing much more slowly, and exports have stagnated.

Impact Of Demonetisation And GST:

Around 1.5 million people lost their job due to demonetisation and a multitude of taxes was converted into one, all India GST caused initial disruption in the job market.

Opposition Reacts To The Data:

The Opposition came down heavily on the government, with the Congress and its members calling out the Centre for the lack of jobs.

Rahul Gandhi reacted to the data, calling out the Modi government’s promises with the hashtag #HowsTheJobs.

The Way Forward:

Every problem has a solution. While on one hand, the government should focus on stronger policies to eradicate this social threat, on the other the youth should come up with innovative ways to contribute to the national income. Many a time the root cause of arrogance is unawareness; the government must know that due to unemployment we are wasting our country’s human resource. So, there is a need to think about how to create employment opportunities in rural and urban areas of the country.

To conclude, unemployment is the consequence of the failure of proper policy making by the government. No doubt there are also some other reasons for the job crisis. But, a lack of policy formulation is the core one. Therefore, the govt needs to bring new policies that can help resolve the problem. Government is responsible for building and maintaining the systems of the nation. There are so many things that a government can do to reduce unemployment.

In simple words, the world’s capital is using India’s resources for maximising its profits. In the wake of the global crisis, the problem cannot be solved just by shifting the workforce from the informal to the formal sector. Instead of downplaying the crisis in terms of statistics, the Indian government must seriously introspect and act to tackle one of the monstrous challenges before the Indian youth.