Delay in releasing key employment
data
The Centre had refused to release
new data on employment that were due to be made public in December 2018. The
findings of the new Periodic Labour Force Survey, for July 2017-December 2018,
are not too flattering, with unemployment registering a five-decade high. On
the question of job-creation for the youth, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet
have been building an argument that jobs abound, but credible data are missing.
Arun Jaitley, in his last year’s Budget speech, cited ‘an independent study’ to
claim seven million formal jobs will be created in 2018-19.
It is essential for elected
representatives of people to realise that most of them are not quite up to the
intellectual levels to understand the complex mechanism of how things change in
society. It is for that reason essential to have independent agencies that
provide it with a mirror on the impact of their policies on the society. The
NSC is one such. To criticise that the members of that institution do not know
how to do their job is laughable at best and scary to the core. A chai-wala can
become a PM; but he needs to go to college and train under experts to become a
good statistician or an economist.
Not making the data public is more
dangerous than the data itself. Isn’t this what 'Fascism' is about?
Some people are finding faults in
BJP. But nobody is completely pure in politics. Modi govt is thousand times
better than this family based Congress. Why do we forget the scams that
surrounded us during UPA regime?
On the employment front, despite
what the govt wants us to believe, there is a set back in the sphere of organised
sector jobs. The govt is outsourcing many of its jobs in hospitals railways
offices municipalities etc. Taking a cue from this, private sector systemically
intent on profits and never on employment production and supplying the needs
and concomitant improvement in invested capital use, jobs are in jeopardy.
There is systemic decline in employment elasticity of growth: lowering levels
of creation of employment for every unit increase in production. Even in the
putatively highly employment intensive construction sector there is
mechanisation and displacement of labour, becoming more and more capital
intensive.Increased capital intensity lowers distributive justice or, spread of
incomes among the lower strata in the socio-economic ladder. The Nov 2016 Demonetisation
has contributed to lowering availability of employment from 20 days a month to
hardly 10 in India.
Statistics are much more important
than generally believed. That most of the Statistics and data put out in public
domain by the Govt (from as early as the 1950's) have been suspect in terms of
Truth and veracity is known. Earlier data had the problem of non-availability
and non-collation of the full information, under consideration. Additionally,
the mechanism to strictly monitor how the Officers entrusted with Statistics
subject (collection/ collation and data management/ dissemination) is still
under cloud. At times the Govt would want to present a "rosy" picture
and influence the Statistics as per the whims and fancies of the Party/leader
at the helm. It is now becoming very clear that such fudging and fumbling are
being practiced at a maximum level under Modi Govt - almost reaching a stage
that Trust is lost in Govt statistics. How this would affect ground realities
of various Planned actions for Development - only Time will tell.
The institutions that release
statistical information on wide range of subjects must be indepent and free
from governmental intervention to manipulate or fludge the data to show lime
light of the ruling party. This is bad. The government must scrap niti aayog
and bring back the planning commission. This system in the past used to take
into account the opinion from public on important issues but niti aayog a poor
quality institution that never cared to take in to account public opinion on
certain decisions that effect the common man's life.
People will lose faith completely
in government statistics and data, and turn to anecdotal evidence.
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