New Delhi:
As debate intensifies over rising unemployment in the country, the Modi government claims to have generated over 379,000 jobs between 2017 and 2019 in its various establishments, according to the Interim Budget for 2019-20.
The government said it has generated 251,279 jobs in central government establishments between 2017 and 2018. This is estimated to go up by 379,544 to reach 36,15,770 on March 1, 2019, shows an analysis of documents of the Interim Budget, presented by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1.
Replying to the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President's address to Parliament on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cited data from provident fund, National Pension System (NPS), Income Tax filings and sale of vehicles among others to say millions of new jobs were created in the formal and unorganised sectors, including transport, hotels and infrastructure.
Meanwhile,asserting India's fast economic growth is not without generation of jobs, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the country actually faces shortage of capital more than the scarcity of jobs.
While most Indians have a job and are earning something, the problem is that many of them may be earning lower wages or may not be employed according to their qualifications, he said.
"In fact, we have the constraint that we don't have as much capital and funds to invest so that we can do more (create more employment). The government has invested Rs 3.5 lakh crore in capital expenditure. If we have more funds, we can invest more," Garg told IANS in an interview.
He said generating jobs relates to economic activity, which is producing goods and services, and the surest ways to generate employment is to make the economy grow and ensure the government takes up more programs of investment in the country.
"The government has carried out innumerable programmes of investment in the rural areas whether it is the 'Prime Minister's Awas Yojana' where crores of houses are being constructed or large programmes of roads in rural areas and National Highway. Every house results into employment generation. There is a large programme for expanding the LPG connections and fuel delivery. All of them have the potential of generating jobs," he said.
India is at a developing stage and there is lot of developmental work to do like construction of roads, houses and infratsructural facilities.
"It can provide a lot of demand for many, many years to come," he said while referring to the demand for workers in the construction industry.
The construction labourer or the mistry, too, has got skills to get employed in any kind of construction work and get a job.
"If the economic activity continues, these jobs will remain. We are scratching just the surface. We need to create thousands of cities. The city infratsructure is nowhere," Garg added.
The Secretary said India has had the highest economic growth in the last four-five years and the growth was accompanied with job generation.
Rejecting the criticism that India was experiencing jobless growth, Garg said it would only be true if the corporate profits were increasing very high compared to the proportion available to the workers. And, the growth in corporate profits was very normal, he said.
"It's difficult to come across people who are literally unemployed. It may be a case of lower wages, more than the case of unemployment. Raising economic activit ..
Meanwhile,the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO’s) latest jobs survey shows that the share of regular salaried workers in employment was on the rise in 2017-18, . The rise in the proportion of regular salaried workers was more in rural areas than in urban parts.
It rose to 13.1 per cent in rural areas in 2017-18 from 8.1 per cent in 2011-12 and 7.1 per cent in 2004-05. In urban parts, it went up to 47 per cent in 2017-18 from 43.4 per cent in 2011-12 and 39.5 per cent in 2004-05.