Budget surrounded by challenges to stop privatization and increase employment
Ankit Mittal july21,2024
The explosive joint report of the International Labour Organization and the Institute of Human Development on unemployment has increased the challenges for Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the upcoming general budget. According to the India Employment Report 2024, 65.7 percent of the educated youth population in India is unemployed. This shows that the productive benefits of the young people available in the country are likely to turn into a huge economic loss and there is a risk of social discontent growing. It is clear from this that the budget that the Finance Minister will present on July 23 will have to create millions of employment opportunities. The ever-increasing inflation is making the deep sting of universal unemployment even more painful. Therefore, the youth is eagerly waiting for the NDA government at the Center to rein in the indiscriminate privatization and liberal labor policies and to create employment opportunities by increasing public expenditure in the budget to be presented on July 23.
Despite the decisive defeat of the BJP in the 2024 general elections, there is no change in the love for capitalists of Narendra Modi, who became the Prime Minister for the third time in a row with the support of the NDA. Nevertheless, after the BJP was stuck at 240 Lok Sabha seats in the elections, as soon as the NDA government was formed, Sitharaman had to cut down the GST rates on food items and other essential commodities. Despite this, the increased dominance of profiteers in the production and distribution systems in the last ten years has not allowed the benefits to reach the common man. Therefore, concrete measures to reduce the dominance of middlemen in the production and distribution system are required in the budget.
Voters have defeated BJP and its NDA allies in the four biggest states of the country- Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Along with this, voters in Haryana have taught BJP a strong lesson by defeating it by five seats, i.e. half of the state. It is worth mentioning that BJP is in power in Haryana for the last ten years and the unemployment rate there is the highest in the country at around 35 percent.
It is unfortunate that in the state of Haryana, where Gurugram city is the headquarters of many multinational companies, the BJP government tried to fool the youth by making a rule to reserve 75 percent jobs for the local population. Its secrets were revealed when the government failed to create new employment opportunities and then the court also cancelled 75 percent local reservation in jobs.
India Employment Report is also confirming the unbridled rise in unemployment in the country. According to this, the number of educated unemployed in the country in the year 2000 was 35.2 percent, which has now doubled. The number of educated unemployed is estimated to increase to 65.7 percent in the year 2022. Surprisingly, despite this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently claimed that more than 8 crore new employment opportunities have been created in the country during his last five years of tenure.
In his 2014 election manifesto, Modi had promised to create two crore new employment opportunities every year. His failure to fulfil this promise has been amply demonstrated by the voters by depriving the BJP of even a simple majority in the 2024 general elections.
Despite Modi’s high voltage promotion of Skill India, it is clear from the report that the major reason for the increase in the number of unemployed is the unskilled youth. The report of the much-hyped Digital India campaign of the Modi government is also exposing the truth by telling that most of the employable youth of the country are still not digitally literate. Many youth do not even know how to open and close a computer. While the Prime Minister never tires of claiming to create crores of new jobs, this report is telling that the income of self-employed and regular employees has also decreased after the year 2019. Unskilled daily wage laborers earning minimum wages had to spend 365 days in poverty without any wages in the year 2022. The unemployment rate also increased rapidly during the Covid period. During that time, more educated people were fired from jobs than less educated people.
Unemployment is very high in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana. Five of these states are ruled by BJP or NDA. In some of these states, including BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh, the rate of growth of employment has been shrinking in the last few years. The report points out the lack of policies of the state governments for this.
On the other hand, RBI i.e. Reserve Bank of India has surprised everyone by claiming that 4.7 crore jobs have been added in the country last year. This research, visible on the RBI website, has revealed the creation of new employment opportunities in reference to 27 major industries related to India’s economy. It is surprising that RBI is releasing these figures of crores of new jobs after voters have given a decisive punishment to BJP for unemployment and inflation. Should this be considered an attempt to brighten the image of Prime Minister Modi again in the upcoming assembly elections! According to these figures, 4.7 crore jobs have increased in 27 industries including financial services, agriculture, trade in the last financial year 2023-24. Due to this, about six percent more people got employment but due to continuous layoffs, the number of unemployed in the country could not decrease.
According to the research, the number of employed people in 27 sectors was 59.67 crores at the end of March 2023, which increased to 64.33 crores in March 2024. According to this information of RBI published under the title Productivity Measurement at Industry Level – India’s LEMS Data, the total number of employment in the country was 53.44 crores in 2019-20. This number increased to 64.33 crores in the next five years. According to this, in the financial year 2022-23, the maximum number of 25.3 crore people got employment in agriculture, fisheries sector, whereas in the financial year 2021-22 only 24.82 crore people got employment in this sector.
These figures presented by RBI were questioned when, as soon as they were presented, Prime Minister Modi claimed in Mumbai that more than eight crore youth in the country got new employment in his last five years of tenure. Keep in mind that assembly elections are to be held in Maharashtra in the next three months. Overall, despite his claims, if Prime Minister Modi, learning from the decisive defeat in the general elections, is not able to get the Finance Minister to take concrete measures to increase employment rapidly and reduce inflation in the upcoming budget, then the youth of the country will have no qualms in showing the mirror to BJP and NDA once again in the upcoming assembly elections of the three states.
