Issue :   
March 2018 Edition of Power Politics is updated.         March 2018 Edition of Power Politics is updated.
Issue:Mar' 2018

Job creation

PM Modi's litmus test

Hari Jaisingh

Is something "missing"? Or, has something gone wrong the way our rulers have organized and managed the country's economy for the past several decades? Some of the early assumptions of economic policies and strategies have turned out to be unrealistic. Certain new assumptions look fragile or misplaced. Indeed, in its long march from the socialist era to the globalised market economy, there are serious

Notwithstanding tall claims and grand declarations like Make-in-India, India's economic growth has not been commensurate with the people's rising expectations and needs of employment growth.

gaps in the country's transition from struggling agrarian society to the 21st century polity. The transition, of course, cannot take place without problems. What is, however, disquieting is that most of our socio-economic problems are either politicized or selfgenerated in the absence of clear perspectives on basic policies, targets and ground realities.

The economy is not a matter of bargain. Nor is it a free play of statistics, though data do matter even if they, like a bikini, happen to hide the real stuff. Who would not know this better than our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely and, to some extent, BJP Chief Amit Shah.
The ruling trio has so far been quite successful dream merchants of tomorrow's achche din, with Amit Shah adding pakoda flavour to the plight of the country's millions of educated unemployed and uneducated jobless.

Arun Jaitely Over the years, statistics on the economic transition tell their own tales. They speak of successes as well as failures of growth and transformation. In the process, they also provide clues to strengths and the weaknesses in the system and induce us to look forward with some optimism without losing sight of the facts which show how and where we have gone wrong.

Half-baked approach

Amit Shah More than statistics, we need to examine, dispassionately and objectively, the Modi government's over three and a half years of economic policies and major steps like demonetization on the touchstone of common sense and human responses on matters ranging from poverty eradication to employment generation.
Notwithstanding tall claims and grand declarations like Make-in- India, it is a hard fact that India's economic growth has not been commensurate with the people's rising expectations and needs of employment growth. Nor has it led to the structure of distribution of income which could have helped to reduce poverty and substantially improve the quality of literacy and availability of minimum health services for common men.

Youth Congress members fry 'pakodas' to protest the PM's statement on employment The Union Budget, of course, takes the people on to the garden path of yearly Rs 5 lakh insurance cover per family for hospitalization. This is a half-baked approach to health services by the Modi establishment since it does not address itself to the vital question of improving "health" of primary health Centres in rural and urban areas. It is also worth noting that even graduates and postgraduates are not getting jobs, though the central and state governments have been spending the tax-payers' money to educate them.

Looking beyond, the only way to the India of our dreams – as a great society with the tremendous creative energies of millions is to concretise a vision of another India. An India where economic growth does not remain a reality only for a few and a myth for the vast multitude. The widening gap between myth and reality has to be erased.

Sluggish growth

At a 2013 poll rally in Agra, Narendra Modi promised to "create one crore jobs". The 2018- 19 Union Budget now has promised a creation of 73 lakh jobs. Labour-intensive industrial projects with skilling back-up and higher public investments in quality education, better health services and policy reforms in the working of the economy can ensure faster growth with job creation.

The 2016-17 Economic Survey, based on data from the labour ministry, said: "Employment growth has been sluggish". It also pointed to a shift in the pattern of employment from permanent job to casual and contract employment. The increasingly 'temporary' nature of work, it said, has an "adverse effect" on the level of wages, stability of employment, and employees' social security. "It also indicates preference by employers away from regular formal employment to circumvent labour laws". There are, indeed, wheels within wheels on what the government has promised and realities on the ground. Though India is the fastest growing economy in the world, yet, ironically enough, we are faced with the paradoxical situation of low investment, low credit offtake and low capacity utilization in industry and even agricultural growth being low. Poor private investment is also a matter of concern.

C Rangarajan True, the latest Budget does try to address some of the people's concerns. But "much will depend upon how the expenditure programmes announced by the Finance Minister will be implemented", as former RBI Governor C Rangarajan points out. According to some eminent economists, "the clumsy implementation of GST and associated glitches have hit the small and medium-scale enterprises the hardest, derailing growth in sectors like textiles, gems and jewellery and leather".
Be that as it may. The enti focus of the Narendra Modi government today is the 2019 general elections. Some populist measures in the Budget are part of the Prime Minister's 2019 win-win target. But the problem with the Modi government today is one of credibility gap, between promises and performance on the ground. As it is, job creation under the present high-profile government of Prime Minister Modi has been "at an eight-year low. Can the Prime Minister's magic wand reverse the process before the 2019 election deadline? I have to keep my fingers crossed.
Looking beyond, the only way to the India of our dreams – as a great society with the tremendous creative energies of millions is to concretise a vision of another India. An India where economic growth does not remain a reality only for a few and a myth for the vast multitude. The widening gap between myth and reality has to be erased, Modi or no Modi!

Some populist measures in the Budget are part of the Prime Minister's 2019 winwin target. But the problem with the Modi government today is one of credibility gap, between promises and performance on the ground.