Unemployment not a major issue, union minister tells Rajya Sabha

Among all the countries, India has the lowest unemployed rate, claimed Union Minister of State for Labour Santosh Gangwar in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Replying to a question of Sukhram Singh Yadav enquiring whether the Government had succeeded in providing 200 million jobs in the last four years, the union minister replied that joblessness in the country was not alarming.

The points the minister made in the Rajya Sabha are as follows:

• As per data employment has gone down in the primary sector of Agriculture and allied areas.
• But employment has actually increased in industries and services.
• This is not abnormal. As countries prosper, their primary sector’s size shrinks.
• As far as data is concerned, we do not see any reduction in employment anywhere.
• In the last four years 28,531 Kilometres of roads have been laid, which would have generated employment.
• The Government also spent ₹1,73,000 Crore on MGNREGA between 2014 and 2018.
• The Government has disbursed ₹6 lakh Crore for self-employment.
• The Government does not have full data of EPF and ESI but reports are being complied and will be available in the next two months.
• However, in the last six months a minimum number of 41 lakh people have been employed as per EPF and ESI.
• By March 10 million more people will get employment.
• The Government is conducting ‘authentic survey’ of employment and the data will be available in the next two or three months.
• A National career Service Portal was launched in 2015. As many as 42 million job seekers and 480,000 employers were registered. Vacancies numbering 2.5 million were also notified

The National career Service Portal, however, shows that the minister furnished wrong information to the Rajya Sabha. It claims to have registered 1.4 million employers and having notified less than a million vacancies.

Neither the minister nor the portal, however, provides a clear picture of how many people have been given employment and where during the last four years.

International Labour Bureau (ILO) does put India’s unemployment rate at 3.5 per cent, lower than Indonesia’s 4.3 and Australia’s 5.7 per cent. But in absolute terms, while the number of unemployed in Australia is projected at less than a million, ILO claims in India the number is 18.6 million this year and projects it would increase to 18.9 million next year.