Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said the Narendra Modi government had added only 12.20 lakh formal jobs in the last five years, which looks pitiably insufficient against the promised two crore jobs every year.
“India under Modi government has added only 12.2 lakh formal jobs in the past five years! That means an average of just 2,44,000 jobs per year!” Kharge wrote on Twitter (now X).
The Congress has projected unemployment as the most important issue in the Modi regime, apart from high prices, attack on constitutional culture and social disharmony.
Kharge added: “We are not inventing this figure. It is the Modi government which created this narrative that EPF Regular Contributors is equal to creation of formal jobs! The EPF data corroborates this. The BJP promised two crore jobs per year! That means 18 crore jobs could have been created in 9 years.”
The latest EPF figures show only 12.2 lakh jobs were added in five years.
Kharge said: “Our youth is staring at a dark future. No wonder, there is anger and violence on the streets. The BJP has miserably failed to provide employment! Unimaginable unemployment, painful price rise and orchestrated hate foisted by BJP has resulted in this disaster of a situation. For the survival of our poor and middle class, the BJP needs to be thrown out of power. India has had enough.”
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has constantly found the unemployment rate very high over the past years; the latest figure being 8.1 per cent.
Modi himself cited payroll data from the EPFO to claim the creation of 1.2 crore formal jobs in 2021. Replying to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address on February 9, 2022, Modi said in the Rajya Sabha: “The EPFO’s payroll data is reliable. In 2021, 1.2 crore new members enrolled themselves on the EPFO portal. Of them, 60 to 65 lakh are in the age group of 18 to 25 years, which means it is their first job. These are all formal jobs. Reports show hiring has increased in recent times. The manufacturing sector has improved, creating more jobs.”
In January 2018, Modi had said in a TV interview that lies were being spread about the lack of employment in India whereas in one year, the EPF accounts of 70 lakh youth between the ages of 18 and 25 have been opened. Modi was quoting from a report — Towards a Payroll Reporting in India — published on 15 January, 2018 by Pulak Ghosh, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic adviser at the State Bank of India.
Even the other BJP ministers started quoting the EPF data to counter the rising unemployment narrative. But the Opposition parties and critics fiercely contested this argument, saying that the EPF data cannot be projected as new employment because it neither accounts for job losses, nor formalisation of existing jobs in informal sectors. Many economists insisted the job scenario had worsened and even existing vacancies in the government had not been filled up.
While the EPF data released monthly is only provisional, it is revised at the year-end, changing the entire picture. Many employees don’t withdraw money from theEPF even after quitting their jobs or after retirement because it offers attractive interest on deposits. The latest edition of the annual EPFO data for 2021-22 — released in December — showed a slowdown in job creation in the formal sector.
