Hearttalk: Jobs Ki Baat
Ever since his ‘glass half empty or half full’ interaction with the Shri Ram College of Commerce students in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the youth has been the centrepiece of Narendra Modi’s appeal.
During his Lok Sabha campaign, Modi never failed to remind the country of the “demographic dividend”. He energised the youth, and created a new vote bank, when he assured them of “1 crore jobs, if voted to power”. Three years into power at the Centre, Modi remains an icon, particularly so for the youth. In fact, as the BW Businessworld ‘Mood of the Nation Survey’ and ‘Corporate India survey’ (BW issue 10 June 2017) revealed, a majority of Indians expects Modi to come back to power in the 2019 elections.
There is a concern, though. The same survey pointed out that the most significant failure of the Modi government “has been on job creation”.
While the country, under Modi, has withstood global economic challenges, and executed bold experiments like demonetisation, jobs have not been happening. If Modi used to hit out at the UPA government for “jobless growth”, the situation has hardly seen any improvement in the last three years under Modi’s regime as well. At least this is what Modi critics argue.
The main Opposition, the Congress, cites the Labour Bureau figures to drive home the point. Official figures suggest that just 2.31 lakh jobs were created in 2016, against a somewhat respectable 10 lakh jobs in 2009, when the UPA was in power.
Commenting on the “overall slowdown” in the economy as the Modi government completed three years in office, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “India’s economic growth has slowed down sharply… The most worrisome aspect of all this is the impact on job creation. Jobs have been extremely hard to come by for the youth of the nation. The construction industry, which is one of the largest employment generators in the country has suffered a contraction. This implies loss of millions of jobs for the nation’s workplace”.
The government, as also the BJP, is hard at work dispelling any notion that jobs are not being created. They reckon that India is still “largely an informal economy, and the jobs therein are hardly accounted for, in official estimates”.
BJP spokespersons also say that the Labour Bureau estimates, which capture the job creation in sectors such as textiles, automobiles, gems and jewellery, leather, metals, IT/BPO, and powerloom/handloom, and transport (with a minuscule sample size), don’t quite capture the job boom in sectors such as e-commerce and logistics. They also add that the number of people contributing to the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has seen a rise of almost 1.5 crore in the last three years, signalling a burgeoning workforce in the formal sector.
While we wait for Modi to speak out on his pet promise, the BJP would do well to keep in mind that the perception of jobs not being created is a reality, and perceptions matter a lot in politics.
Consider this: ever since some IT majors announced “appraisal-related” job cuts, there has been a perception that the IT industry is in a deep crisis, with thousands losing jobs.
IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, quoting Nasscom, has been at pains to argue that there has been a growth in the IT jobs market, but the perception refuses to wither away.
The government has said in the Parliament that it will ensure jobs for 5 crore unemployed people by 2020. The Modi government, in the same vein, argues that the very contours of job creation have seen a shift with the new thrust on entrepreneurship with measures like the Mudra Yojana coming in handy.
This debate is unlikely to end anytime soon. PM Modi should clinch the opportunity to do what he does best – communicate. Maybe if he devotes one of his Mann ki Baat episodes to jobs, he would have calmed a lot of frayed nerves.
