Over a hundred thousand new jobs—1,09,589, to be precise—were created every day in 2023-24, the Reserve Bank of India said in its latest report on employment.
Citing this report about the creation of 4.7 crore new jobs in the last fiscal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that eight crore new jobs were created in India in the last three to four years, and it silenced those “spreading fake narratives”.
The Opposition was quick to pick holes. By telling one lie after another on jobs, you are rubbing salt in the wounds of the youth, said Congress party’s communications chief Jairam Ramesh. He questioned how the RBI arrived at this figure when it didn’t disclose the sector-wise break-up as it did in the past. My colleague TCA Sharad Raghavan reported that over 37 per cent of women counted as ‘workers’ in the RBI report were doing ‘unpaid work’. Unpaid helpers in household enterprises constituted 18.3 per cent of the workforce in 2022-23, as per the Periodic Labour Force Survey. For instance, if a person is selling pakoras at a stall, with his wife frying them and the daughter or son serving them, they are all counted as employed in the unpaid helpers’ category. As per PLFS 2022-23, 20.9 per cent of the workforce in India are regular wage/salary employees. Others include unpaid helper, casual labour and own account worker and employer.
Opposition’s criticism aside, the Economic Survey 2023-24, tabled by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament, sought to revalidate what PM Modi suggested in Mumbai—that India has witnessed “a notable transformation in its employment landscape”. Its detailed accounts of the Modi-led government’s achievements in creating jobs had a catch though. “Estimates show that about 51.25 per cent of the youth is deemed employable. In other words, about one in two are not yet readily employable, straight out of college. However, it must be noted that the percentage has improved from around 34 per cent to 51.3 per cent in the last decade,” said the Economic Survey. Official employment data might paint a rosy picture but the government was uncharacteristically tough with the main job creator, the private sector. “India’s corporate sector never had it so good as profits quadrupled between FY20 and FY23….Hiring and compensation growth hardly kept up with it. But, it is in the interest of the companies to step up hiring and worker compensation,” said the survey. The private sector then came in for more flak for their “substantial” and “myopic” contribution to the “toxic mix” of social media, screen time, sedentary habits and unhealthy food that affected India’s working age population. The tough language somehow didn’t seem to be in consonance with the government’s claims about employment growth.
Also read: How BJP leaders, voters and cadres are all sending SOS messages in their own ways
Did day-to-day issues really swing voters?
Anyway, trust the Opposition to question the government’s claims about employment generation. They look convinced that issues like unemployment, inequality, and poverty trumped Hindutva and PM Modi’s popular appeal in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. How else would one look at PM Modi’s victory margin getting so much reduced in Varanasi? Or for that matter, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) loss in Faizabad, a constituency where Ayodhya’s Ram temple is located, and in UP as a whole? Or the Congress retaining Badrinath in the assembly bypoll?
So, if day-to-day concerns like unemployment have started swinging voters as the Opposition seems to believe, why is the BJP doubling down on Hindutva? UP and Uttarakhand governments instructing eateries to show owners’ nameplates on Kanwarias’ routes and BJP MLAs demanding the same in Madhya Pradesh aren’t coincidental. One needs to see them in the context of what other top BJP leaders are doing. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was speaking about ‘land jihad’ and ‘love jihad’ in Jharkhand and describing the opposition as Aurangzeb’s fan club in Maharashtra. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is talking about his state becoming Muslim majority by 2041. His Rajasthan counterpart, Bhajan Lal Sharma, sees no change in “one category of people” when it comes to population control. And then BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya says that “four begums and 36 children” will not be allowed.
So, if the 2024 Lok Sabha results were a signal to Modi-Shah to shift from Hindutva politics to addressing issues like unemployment, inequality and day-to-day concerns of the common man, why are they not getting the message? Going by their past record, they should know the public pulse much better than you, I, and the Opposition. They obviously know something more than what others don’t. Their political adversaries might be tempted to think that the BJP is doing communal politics because that’s all it knows. Or that it is mistaken in continuing with what one may call the politics of vicarious identification. So, if someone is unemployed, they think that their turn hasn’t come but eight crore others have got it. A middle-class person would think that it’s okay to pay much more for vegetables or petrol because an old mother in a village is getting a gas cylinder. Because someone else is able to benefit under Ayushman Bharat scheme. And an unemployed person or an impoverished farmer would think that their sacrifice is worth making the country vishwaguru.
These presumptions about the BJP’s politics of vicarious identity may still be valid. But the Opposition should probably give more credit to Modi-Shah because if they could redefine Indian politics, they must know more than others. They are reading something different in the 2024 public mandate. The CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey gives an indication. Yes, there was a slight dip from 2019 in the percentage of people being fully satisfied and somewhat satisfied with the government’s performance—from 65 per cent to 59 per cent—but the most liked work of the government was still the construction of the Ram temple (22 per cent). Most disliked works of the Modi government were price rise/inflation (24 per cent), growing unemployment (23 per cent) and increasing poverty (11 per cent). But here is the catch. Even among those who had a negative assessment, 40 per cent of those for whom price rise/inflation was an issue voted for the BJP as against 21 per cent for the Congress. For growing unemployment, the post-poll survey figures of voters read 36 per cent for the BJP and 20 per cent for the Congress. It’s 32 per cent for the BJP and 23 per cent for the Congress for increasing poverty.
Look at data closely
If unemployment was such a big issue for voters, look at these data points from the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey more closely. Among voters up to 25 years, 39 per cent went for the BJP and 21 per cent for the Congress. Compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, as the post-poll surveys indicated, the BJP lost one per cent and the Congress gained one per cent in this category. For those between 26 and 35 years, the BJP got 37 per cent and the Congress 21. From 2019, the difference was two percentage points—down for the BJP and up for the Congress. These aren’t the figures that should excite the BJP’s political adversaries.
That should explain why the BJP is doubling down on its Hindutva politics. The above-mentioned data suggest that poverty and unemployment might be matters of concern for the people, but they don’t necessarily drive their voting preferences. Modi-Shah’s politics post-polls suggests as much. They don’t see anything amiss in the public mandate, not in terms of voters’ rejection of their politics or governance. They seem to be looking for the fault somewhere within: Internal sabotage, failure to counter the Opposition’s propaganda about “400 paar”, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) apathy, bad ticket distribution, and allies’ below-par performance, among others? Bad ticket distribution is obviously not a part of the discussion so far. That’s a story in the works as the BJP conducts internal reviews, hitting headlines, especially in UP, for all the wrong reasons.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)
Every line dripping pure hatred towards BJP.