New Delhi: It is incorrect to think that the government can solve all social and economic challenges, Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran said Tuesday, prompting attacks from opposition leaders who asked the government to ‘vacate its seat’ if it could not address the problem of unemployment.
“In the normal world, it is the commercial sector that needs to do the hiring,” Nageswaran said during his speech at the unveiling of the ‘India Employment Report 2024: Youth Employment, Education and Skills’, co-authored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD).
The report highlights the challenges faced by the Indian job market ahead of the end of the financial year. It has flagged several concerns, including an increase in the unemployment of youth with higher education, with this demographic constituting nearly 83 percent of the country’s unemployed workforce.
It also highlighted a higher proportion of unpaid family work among youth than adults, along with stagnant or declining wages and earnings, a reversal in non-farm employment, and women accounting for an increase in unpaid family work.
Nageswaran highlighted skill development efforts and the 2020 National Education Policy as some of the ways through which the government has been facilitating an increase in job creation.
Later in the day, in an interview with DD India, the CEA again asserted that the Indian private sector needs to step up.
“The second decade (2010-2020) was one in which the investment rate declined because of balance sheet problems,” he explained. “Therefore, the private sector making investments in capital formation will be an important prerequisite for jobs to be created.”
He said that the employment report acknowledges that despite the pandemic, several employment indicators have improved between 2019 and 2022. Moreover, he said that there has been a higher enrollment of women in the education sector, adding that the report acknowledges the improvements on the positive developments that have taken place in the Indian labour market and also correctly credits many of the government initiatives for contributing to that improvement.
“We have a demographic advantage that is supposed to last for another 25-30 years,” he said.
Among several facilitative steps taken by the government, Nageswaran stressed on the National Education Policy, calling it “futuristic”.
“It understands the challenges that will come for employment generation from new technology developments and therefore it provides flexibility to the youth to kind of mix and match their skills in such a way that they don’t become overly concentrated, in which case it is easy to replace them with machines,” Nageswaran told DD India.
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‘Sitting on a ticking bomb of joblessness’
Soon after the CEA made his statements, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge took to X.
“Our youth is bearing the brunt of Modi Govt’s pathetic apathy, as ever-rising unemployment has destroyed their future. ILO & IHD report conclusively says that the unemployment problem is grim in India. They are conservative, we are sitting on a ‘ticking bomb’ of joblessness,” Kharge posted, adding that the CEA was protecting the “dear leader” by saying that the government cannot solve all social and economic problems.
Our Youth is bearing the brunt of Modi Govt's pathetic apathy, as ever-rising Unemployment has destroyed their future.
ILO & IHD Report conclusively says that the Unemployment problem is grim in India.
They are conservative, we are sitting on a 'ticking bomb' of joblessness !… pic.twitter.com/qhQYePoBXC
— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) March 27, 2024
Congress leader P. Chidambaram, too, described Nageswaran’s statement as “startling”.
“He said that ‘Government cannot solve the problem of unemployment’. Shocking if that is the official stand of the BJP government, we must boldly tell the BJP ‘vacate your seat’. The Congress has a concrete plan to tackle the issue of unemployment and it will be revealed in its manifesto,” he posted on X.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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