Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) recently came up with figures which showed that there was a sharp job loss in the year ended December 2018. (https://cmie.com/kommon/bin/sr.php?kall=warticle&dt=2019-01-08%2009:28:37&msec=666) According to them, 11 million jobs have been lost in 2018 and the unemployment rate has shot up to 7.4%. Also, as per this report 84% of the job loss was in the rural areas, which has 2/3rds of the population in Bharat and from the 11 million jobs lost, the women lost 8.8 million jobs and the men lost about 2.2 million jobs. Some other factors that the report states:
- Urban men did not lose jobs. On the contrary, they gained half a million jobs during 2018.
- The hit was taken entirely by the uneducated. All other categories of maximum education level saw an increase in employment.
- The uneducated accounted for 10 per cent of all employed persons in December 2017. Their share has fallen rapidly.
The last point is very important. This government has worked very hard to increase the number of skilled people and to reduce the number of uneducated. “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” has percolated to every corner of our country, irrespective of religion or caste or sex. I would like to share some figures here.
As per the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, a total of 6,35,751 people have been trained since 2014.
Another very interesting figure comes via the Self Help Groups under the Aajeevika – Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – NRLM as on 23.01.2019:
(a) Number of households mobilized into SHG: 52,91,530
(b) Number of SHGs promoted: 4,10,783
(c) Number of village organisations promoted: 26,516
(d) Number of community resource persons developed: 1,18,292
This means that slowly our villages are turning towards small scale industries or home run businesses instead of looking for salaried jobs in the villages or cities.
Now let us look at MNREGA, a very big source of salaried income in the villages –
(taken from http://ruraldiksha.nic.in/RuralDashboard/MGNREGA_New.aspx#)
Now, if one were to look carefully, the expenditure on MGNREGA has actually increased in 2017-18 and will reach the high by the year ending 2019. If the expenditure by the government has increased in MGNREGA, there is very little chance that the employment has dropped so drastically in 2018.
If one were to look at the above page taken from the e-book of the Ministry of Rural Development, it is obvious that the focus of the youth and the women in the rural areas is increasingly shifting to self employment, rather than salaried jobs.
Houses being built under the PM Awaaz Yojana, over 9 crore toilets being built all over Bharat – all these itself must have provided employment to skilled and unskilled labourers all over the country.
To negate all these compiled data and show that employment has actually reduced in Bharat, with the use of a sample size of 1,40,000 respondents, probably indicates that figures and news are being presented in a way to undermine the achievements of the current NDA Government under Narendra Modi.
Also read : https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/claims-of-jobless-growth-during-modi-regime-bogus-18-million-jobs-in-professional-and-transport-sector-alone-in-just-4-years/1450930/ to know about the increase in the Employment rate in the Urban areas of Bharat.
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