Govt must focus on creating jobs, not on critical comments

It is not very often that the government’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) rebuts a report by experts. However, it did precisely that early this week, when it took exception to a research report by Citigroup on employment in India. Unfortunately, both the report and the rebuttal were somewhat extreme. The report, which was quoted by many in the media, painted a dismal picture of the employment scenario in the country. It said that India will struggle to create sufficient employment opportunities even with a seven per cent growth rate.

To be sure, the Citigroup report did come up with some valid points. It said that based on a growth rate of seven per cent, India can only generate 8-9 million jobs a year, whereas it needs to create about 12 million jobs a year over the next decade to absorb the number of new entrants to the labour market. The quality of jobs being created is another challenge, Citigroup economists said. “Manufacturing accounted for 11.4 per cent of total jobs in 2023, a lower share than in 2018.” Further, it said, fewer people are employed in the formal sector now than before Covid. A number of experts and anecdotal evidence suggest that unemployment is a big problem.

In fact, the BJP’s lessthanimpressive performance in the recent general elections has been widely attributed to the job crisis. Sadly, the Narendra Modi government is still very averse to, if not in a denial mode over, the job scene. It bristles at any critical comment on the subject; the PIB’s refutation of the Citigroup report corroborates this fact. So, it retorted: the report “fails to account for the comprehensive and positive employment data available from official sources” such as the Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) and the Reserve Bank of India’s data.It concluded saying that the “Ministry of Labour and Employment emphasizes the credibility and comprehensiveness of official data, cautioning against the selective use of private data sources that can lead to misleading conclusions about India’s employment scenario.” At least one conclusion that the Citigroup report draws is misleading. It said that the government should fill up about one million government vacancies.

Well, the government should do that if and when neededbut not to address the unemployment issue. It estimates that India will face a shortage of 30-40 million jobs, meaning that offering government jobs to youth would not solve the problem. Also, perhaps the employment situation is not as bad as Citigroup economists believe. According to another recent report by State Bank of India, between 2013-14 and 2022-23, India generated 125 million jobs, which was 4.3 times more than the preceding decadal period.

Be that as it may, the government must acknowledge the fact that employment generation has not been its strong suit. It has been able to manage the economy reasonably well; this is reflected in macroeconomic indicators and infrastructure building; there has been decent economic expansion in the recent past and the pace is generally expected to continue; but growth has been able to create as many jobs as are required. It is time the government, instead of spending time and energy disputing uncharitable remarks, chalks out strategies to boost employment generation.