"Unstable, crisis-ridden": Congress slams 100 days of Modi 3.0, says govt 'failed to act' on mass unemployment crisis
Sep 17, 2024
New Delhi [India], September 17 : Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday hit out at the BJP government for the first 100 days of Modi 3.0, calling it "unstable and crisis-ridden."
In a statement released by him on X, he criticised the union government for failing to create sufficient employment.
https://x.com/Jairam_Ramesh/status/1835930512310813018?t=Q9R_IAnTRSrYbyWzw-M9ow&s=08
His post read, "Yesterday marked a hundred days of this unstable, crisis-ridden government--an anniversary characterised by yet another failure to act on India's mass unemployment crisis. Our statement on the necessity for the government to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis facing India's youth."
Citing the International Labour Organisation's (ILO's) India Employment Report, 2024, he claimed that there has been 'almost zero growth in employment'.
"The ILO's India Employment Report, 2024, finds that each year, around 70-80 lakh youths are added to the labour force, but between 2012 and 2019, there was almost zero growth in employment- just 0.01 per cent. The same report found that in 2022, unemployment was very high among the urban youth (17.2 per cent) as well as rural youth (10.6 per cent)," the statement read.
Further criticising the government, he said that there has been an increase of jobs in the informal sector while employment in the formal sector has decreased from 10.5 per cent to 9.7 per cent.
"The ILO report found that the Modi government increased the percentage of low-paying informal-sector employment without social security, while formal employment decreased from 10.5 pc to 9.7 pc from 2019-22. Citigroup confirmed the same trend, noting that only 21 pc of India's labour force has salaried jobs, lower than 24 pc of pre-Covid," he added.
He also claimed that the absolute number of workers in the agricultural sector has increased, saying that people are moving from factories back to farming.
He said, "For the first time in decades, under Modi's mismanagement, the absolute number of workers in agriculture is increasing. This goes against the very basic concept of economic modernization, which every developed country along the world has gone through."
He added further, "The non-biological PM and his drumbeating economists have consistently attacked the idea of jobless growth. The reality of what we have seen since 2014 is perhaps even more stark, job-loss growth."
