Unemployment rate highest in five years

The Government on Monday conceded in the Rajya Sabha that unemployment has grown in the country during the last few years, especially among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs.

It started with BJP Member Narendra Jadhav asking, “Is it not true that funds amounting to ₹12,000 crores meant for post-matric scholarships for Dalits and Adivasis were not spent last year?”

While Jadhav wanted to know if this was true and, if so, why, Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh replying on behalf of the Government replied that this was highly unlikely because the Government had been consistently increasing allocations for SC and STs in all schemes monitored by a 100-odd ministries.

When Hussain Dalwai, Congress MP from Maharashtra intervened to assert that no scholarship was being paid to SC and STs in Maharashtra and even scholarships given to the minority community had been stopped, the minister passed the buck to the states and said that implementation of the schemes was the responsibility of the state governments and the Centre could not be held accountable.

Amidst howls of protest from MPs, the minister began reeling off figures of unemployment, conceding in the process that the unemployment rate had accelerated in recent years.

• The Scheduled Tribes’ unemployment rate in July, 2011 was 2.6% but it had gone up to 4.4% in August, 2016, the minister informed.
• The unemployment rate for the Scheduled Castes in 2011 was 3.2%, he added, but the figure had moved up to 5%.
• The total unemployment rate in the country has also gone up from 3.8% in July, 2011 to 5%.
• The highest incidence of unemployment today is of OBCs. It was 3.2% in 2011 and has become 5.2% in August, 2016, the minister informed.

For more details, this report is recommended.