Unemployment has been a major deterrent for India's growth for years.
Hope reigned supreme for the unemployed population of India on Thursday when Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the government would create as many as 50 lakh (5 million) jobs in highways and shipping soon.
The government is all set to undertake massive projects in these two sectors, the minister said.
Besides, the government is working towards a Rs 22,000-crore (Rs 220-billion) project to provide connectivity between India and Sri Lanka for which the Asian Development Bank has expressed willingness to provide funding, Gadkari said on the sidelines of a conference in New Delhi.
Unemployment has been a major deterrent for India's growth for years.
According to the fourth Annual Employment & Unemployment Survey report for 2013-14, released recently by Labour Bureau, Gujarat had the lowest unemployment rate of 1.2 per cent while Sikkim had the highest.
The country's overall unemployment rate was estimated to be 4.9 per cent in 2013-14.
As per the same report, the unemployment rate per 1,000 people aged more than 15 years was lowest in Gujarat at 12, followed by Karnataka at 18, Maharashtra at 28, Union Territory of Chandigarh at 28, Madhya Pradesh at 29 and Telangana at 33.
In case of women living in urban areas, the unemployment rate was 12.4 per cent, while in rural areas, it was 6.4 per cent.
The overall unemployment among women was 7.7 per cent across the country.
In such a scenario, Gadkari's words have surely struck an optimistic chord.
“We have decided to do work worth Rs 5 lakh crore (Rs 5 trillion) in the road sector and Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 1 trillion) in the shipping sector,” Gadkari told the media on Thursday.
“In the next five years we will ensure employment to at least 50 lakh (5 million) youth in the country," he added.
The government, he said, has been trying to improve connectivity with neighbouring nations on high priority basis.
After signing pacts with Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal for seamless flow of traffic, another project for providing connectivity with Sri Lanka is on the anvil.
All these sound great but will the government be able to fulfil its job promises?
There are reasons to doubt Gadkari’s words.
According to a recent IndiaSpend report that rediff.com published, there has been a slowdown in employment in the formal, organised sector.
Data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Indian factories show that more than 400,000 people lost their jobs during the financial year 2012-13.
The same report states that more people were employed in Indian factories during 1994-95 than a decade later in 2005-06.
This clearly indicates that industrial India in recent times is getting more output per person engaged in its industrial activities.
In other words, it needs fewer workers to do the same work.
Under such circumstances, one is forced to take the promises thrown up by one of the most prominent ministers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet with a pinch of salt.
One can, however, trace a single ray of hope as the same IndiaSpend report states that job prospects in the Indian industry have started looking up for the past few months, thanks to capital-intensive production methods.
What is the actual state of employment in India? Has there been a fall in unemployment? Which Indian state has performed the best in this respect?
We present here a map created by Rediff Labs that would give a clear idea about the Indian states where unemployment is dropping the most.
Image: Job seekers visit an employment centre. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters
