Growth or Jobless Growth: What Does the Statistics Say?

Damodar

If any sector has been affected most in four years of Modi government definitely it is the economy. Courtesy Modi and his finance minister Arun Jaitley, today there has been a perceptible decline in every sector of the economy. From Manufacturing to service and from joblessness to jobless growth. The impending economic catastrophe is now round the corner, but like Nero the rulers are engrossed in rewriting history and patting themselves for their own work.

During Congress regime development had become destruction for the working class, peasants and other marginalised section of society primarily the dalit community and tribals; Modi has only exacerbated this uneven development to that extent where the country is now becoming property of the few. Today, it can be said that development has become a synonyms for growth of Ambani, Adani and Ramdev. While the general populace is being bled to satisfy the profit appetite of the industrial houses. For every problem, the government seems to have one solution, give more contracts to Ambanis and Adanis. Be it the license of domestic port linking to other ports of the country that has been given to Adani or the initiation of the process of handing over of more than 60,000 mobile towers of the public sector BSNL to Reliance Jio. It’s the rule of capital that has come to assume the draconian form. While people are being removed from their traditional dwelling at times violently, the industrial houses are being welcomed with open heart and stretched hands.

Some call it crony-capitalism, for us it is pure capitalism! Capitalism by itself cannot survive, if it doesn’t work to grow the capital. Hence the fetish for unbridled growth. We are reminded once again of the brilliant words written by Karl Marx, where he says: “If money comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” (Capital Vol. I)

We are witnessing a steep rise in this ‘growth’ mania since the initiation of the Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) program by the Congress led Government of Narsimha Rao and his finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. This is not to say that before 1990, in India there existed no exploitation or a socialism was in place, but after the initiation of the so called reform process, we have witnessed exploitation increasing along with various rules of capitalism revealing all its pangs. The reform process has been something that every government in centre and provinces have assiduously followed and promoted. So at least when it comes to the concept of ‘development’, we find that all parties from Right to Left promoting it. Sometimes even at the peril of their own government, like that of CPI-M led Left Front in West Bengal, that was decimated when it wanted to take Bengal on the path of ‘development’ and industrialisation, all in name of people though the people opposed such development of theirs!.

Since the collapse of Soviet Union, we find that the ‘new world order’ of the imperialists is being increasingly pushed and to certain amount has been established, and still continuing. To achieve this, the imperialists resorted to military, political and financial arm twisting for all the countries to come in line. Who ever resisted met the pre-ordained faith well established in diplomacy i.e either join or perish. We do not have to cite the various examples to prove our point, as it has been well recorded by ourselves and in several other works around the globe.

What we would like to highlight is that apart from the right wing and centrist forces that have always been on the side of bourgeoisie, today even the namesake Communist parties are kowtowing and dancing to the same tune of international finance capital, wherever they have come to power either nationally or in some province.

So these parties are revolutionary when in opposition but when in power they subsume the interest of the working class to that of the imperialists. We had witnessed this for the parties of Second International and same happened to the parties that remained struck with Khrushchevite policy, when Khrushchev along with his clique were demonising Stalin and destroying the gains of Socialism. Unfortunately even a large segment of ML forces in India are becoming complacent to this machinations of imperialism and behind their revolutionary phraseology the crass acceptance of imperialism is well evident. Yet the voices against imperialism though growing is scattered.

The corpse of capitalism is decaying but still has not been buried. As Lenin said, for every revolution to happen a revolutionary situation is required but every revolutionary situation will not lead to revolution. Herein lies the vital link, which is the revolutionary party. So we find today that there is mass unrest which is growing, but still the ember of revolution is not glowing. The only reason for this is the absence of a revolutionary party. And till the bourgeoisie are aware of their existing no such party they know that their rule of capital assisted by various state machineries is intact, hence we find the state evicting poor from their hearth and even resorting to killing, maiming and raping with impunity. For they are well aware of the political condition prevailing in the country. Till the revolutionary camp is in disarray, the economic exploitation and social oppression would continue. This the crux of situation where we stand today.

It is a cruel irony that the class which has been bestowed with the task of leading the revolutionary change is finding itself being chained to the dictates of capital, and its leaders who are bending over backwards to grab a piece of power’s pie. That is why we see leaders from district to the national level all vying for becoming a pall bearer of this or that regional satrap and of late again of Congress. When the parliamentary left should have been gearing for a change and uniting the voices of protest into a national movement along with presenting an alternative vision for development, they are spending all their energy for getting a place in some state or national electoral front led by parties constituting the ex- third front or even under that of Congress. Hence to keep any expectation from these parties would be akin to thought of all lions of jungle becoming vegetarian. In garb of sonorous phrase like People’s Democracy being repeated by CPI M, behind it is nothing but an attempt to forge electoral coalition with this or that party, to get few seats in state legislature or in the Parliament.

The ruling party knows this, hence there seems to be no overt feeling of anti-incumbency in their mannerisms for 2019. They are continuing their old ways, of inciting communal trouble and deflecting the real issues with concocted stories. The stark reality today is same as that in 1903, when Lenin wrote, “Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed.” (Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism)

There has been a general deterioration in all, the sectors of economy, but the space constraints forces us to analyse them one at a time so as to understand the deeper malady and get to the bottom of the issue involved. Something that can’t be done by just skimming the surface.

Hence, we begin with the issue of unemployment as well as the destruction of jobs and then would go on to cover the various other fields like crisis of agriculture and the problems being faced by the industrial segment.

Before we start our analysis, we would like to dispel some of the common myth being propagated by both the government and the ruling dispensation various propaganda machinery, now correctly termed as IT cell.

The Prime Minister, followed by his number second-in-command Amit Shah both had mentioned that even selling pakoras is a job. This was taken up by various other ministers both at the centre and province to claim about the success. So we shall start with the definition of job and then go on to differentiate between a job and self employment.

As per the definition of employment given by ILO;

“Persons in employment comprise all persons above a specified age who during a specified brief period, either one week or one day, were in the following categories:
– paid employment;
– self-employment.
Context: Persons who during a specified brief period such as one week or one day, (a) performed some work for wage or salary in cash or in kind, (b) had a formal attachment to their job but were temporarily not at work during the reference period, (c) performed some work for profit or family gain in cash or in kind, (d) were with an enterprise such as a business, farm or service but who were temporarily not at work during the reference period for any specific reason. (Current International Recommendations on Labour Statistics, 1988 Edition, ILO, Geneva, page 47, Italics supplied).

Now, from the above we see that ILO definition divides employment into two categories i.e. Job and Self-employment.

So what constitutes a job? As per Oxford dictionary, a job is

(a) A paid position of regular employment.
(b) A task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.

So we see that two defining feature of job is it should be regular and one gets paid for doing it. This is important because in this era of post truth several such information are dissipated that confuses those who do not go into the details.

Now let us see how our country is faring on job front followed by an analysis of the situation in the self-employment segment. We shall be focussing on the period since coming of Modi led NDA-II while at same time we shall also be analysing the period before that as and when required. In this our aim is to show a continuity of the policy that Modi is following in the interest of the bourgeoisie, albeit in more ferocious form. After all is fascism not the rule of bourgeoisie in its most ferocious form?

As Dimitrov says, “The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie — bourgeois democracy — by another form — open terrorist dictatorship.” (Georgi Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism). After witnessing four years of Modi and the intensification of the regime propounding the Hindutva brand of politics, we are forced to remember the above words of comrade Dimitrov about Fascism and also to find some uncanny similarities from the lessons drawn from this analysis of the then prevailing Europe and what is happening in India. Though the puritanical would get goose-bumps to acknowledge the character of present regime as Fascist, due to reasons known to us all.

Coming to the core topic of this essay, the spectre of joblessness is haunting the youths of the country. In India 17 million youths enter the workforce every year and out of them only 5.5 million are expected to get employed. So approx 12 million working age population is left unemployed every year. With 65% of the population below the age of 35, majority of Indian youths would remain unemployed for near future. It may be remembered, that Modi during his election campaign had promised to create 2 Crore (20 million) jobs and had made joblessness a major election plank. But the reality is that under Modi, the country is witnessing the worst spell of job drought and even that of job destruction.

The Government replying to a question in Parliament had said that there are 44.9 million people who have registered themselves in the employment exchanges as per the data available till September 2015.

This trend would only head downwards as the new data suggests even worsening conditions in the field of job-generation. As per the data provided by the CSO in January 2018, “Agriculture, which makes for 17.3% of the country’s GDP, offers livelihoods to over half the country’s population. It is expected to grow at an abysmal 2.1% in financial year 2018, according to CSO estimates. That’s less than half the growth rate a year earlier.” Since 2014, as mentioned in the table 1 we are witnessing a steep decline in the growth of agriculture share to the GDP, yet it still supports half of the working age population.

With agriculture in deep crisis, with the all-round withdrawal of government’s investment, massive reduction in bank credits, the policy of import promotion of cereals and food grains, and the forcible acquisition of farm lands for various projects, have brought this sector to almost complete ruin. Yet in absence of any job in manufacturing sector, people are forced to remain dependent on it even when it does not yield a decent living. As a result we have seen the farmer’s suicide becoming a regular phenomenon that does not ring any bell for the ruling class of this country.

The joblessness is set to exacerbate to 18.6 million in 2018 and in 2019 it would touch to 18.9 million, compared to 18.3 million in 2017, as per the report published by ILO.

There has been a continuous growth in the number of job seekers and in the last week of April 2018, it spiked to 7.41 per cent, which according to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, was the highest weekly unemployment rate in 78 weeks, or since early October 2016. On an average the unemployment rate in India has been going up since 2015. The new rate is an indication that this rate has gone up again, from the prevailing average of 6.5 as observed in the preceding weeks. CMIE and BSE jointly have been surveying and presenting before us data on unemployment and job creation.

In one of their reports they mention: “the high unemployment rate has persisted in the following week of April 15. Now, the preceding week’s 7.41 percent does not look like an outlier but, possibly, looks like an indication that the unemployment rate has inched up again. During the first fortnight of April the rate hovered at around 7.25 percent, that was highest compared to recent average. The unemployment rate has been rising since July 2017 when it clocked a mere 3.4 per cent. The rate rose quickly to 5 per cent by October 2017 and then stabilised around 5 per cent for three months before spurting to 6 per cent in February and March 2018. Now, with data for two weeks in hand, it seems poised to rise higher in April. It would be safe to assume that the rate has risen and April is likely to report an unemployment rate that would be the highest since demonetisation.”

Further, on analysing the data that they generate it is seen that the spike in unemployment growth is not an outlier but has become a trend that is growing continuously. The growth is alarming as within a matter of less than one year it has more than doubled i.e. from 3.4 percent to 7.41 percent. What does it mean? This growth reveals the dark side of Indian economy and its skewed growth.

The CMIE-BSE statistics on employment/unemployment mentioned about the rising unemployment in both rural and urban India. It said, …the unemployment rate in urban India in the four quarters of 2017-18 rose steadily – from 4.7 per cent in the first quarter to 5 per cent then 5.7 per cent and finally 6.6 per cent in the last quarter. Similarly even in rural area the trend of raising unemployment continues, the survey said “…It (the unemployment in rural India — Author) was 3.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2017-18 and then it was 3.6 per cent in the second quarter. Then it rose to 4.4 per cent in the third quarter and finally to 5.4 per cent in the last quarter.”

It is well known that the Indian growth story instead of being inclusive has been exclusive since beginning and even when it clocked an average growth of 9 percent during 2005 to 2012, it had failed to generate enough job and lift people out of absolute poverty. But this has exacerbated after demonetisation, which had severe strain on the economy as whole and the manufacturing segment in particular. All the myth that country has recovered from the aftershock of demonetisation, sounds hollow as the statistical data proves otherwise.

Around 12.6 million jobs were lost in the first two months of demonetisation. In a report published by the All India Manufacturers’ Organisation (AIMO), on the job loss in December 2016, reported 40% and 32% job losses in the age groups of 40-55 and 22-30 years respectively during the first 50 days of demonetisation. The report also stated that till December 31, 2016, 60% job losses were reported with a 47% dip in revenue in the sector of small-scale traders, shops and micro industries. Medium-scale industries with a staff strength of 300 to 700 people suffered 3% job losses and a 7% revenue loss. Large-scale industries, with 2,000-3,000 employees, suffered 2% job losses and 3% revenue dip during the same period. (Indian Express, January 17, 2017).

The impact of this policy is still being felt, though what benefits were realised by this humongous task is still not discernible to us. Economics devoid of logic even in market economy is capable of wreaking havoc, and this move is one of the prime example of it.

Apart from the job loss, the process has also witnessed a decline in the labour force participation rate (LPR).

The rise in unemployment rate (UR) is worrisome, but what is deeply concerning is the decline in the LPR. LPR is defined as the rate measures of the share of population that is actively participating in the labour market, or the total number of people employed and unemployed as a share of the working-age population.

What does declining LPR indicates?

LPR declines when significant amount of working age population stops searching for job. We had witnessed, similar decline in US during the 2008 recession, when the LPR significantly declined, as the prospects of getting job receded. The economists describe two scenarios that leads to LPR decline, (a) The supply side i.e. when the labour force are ill fit for jobs available (b) The demand side that means there is reduction in the demand particularly for less-skilled workers due to various factors like innovation, automation or even change in the model (like a technology or product becoming obsolete, this is very much perceptible in Information Technology).

In India we cannot say that the major reason for decline in LPR was due to demand side, as we saw that the majority of prime age workers (worker between ages of 25 to 54 years) were involved in activities like construction, service sector and manufacturing. So India with its large young population, of which half are below 25 years of age, then why are we witnessing a decline in LPR even almost after two years of demonetisation? When in the US similar situation arose the then President of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis James Bullard explaining this phenomenon had written an article titled The Rise and Fall of Labor Force Participation in the United States, where he had mentioned primarily two reasons for decline in LPR.

(a) The “demographics” view, which states that the changes in the rate are a due to the changes in the demographics of the labour force; in words of Bullard; “the decline in labor force participation simply reflects changing demographics in the U.S. economy and that different demographic groups have different propensities to participate in market work. As we have different numbers of people in these different demographic groups, we should naturally expect the aggregate labor force participation rate to change.”

(b) The “bad omen” view, which states that the declines in the LPR rate are due to people leaving the search for seeking job due to the poor state of the economy. Bullard described it as “Some say that the decline in labor force participation is a bad omen for U.S. macroeconomic performance, with labor market dropouts reflecting frustration with the state of the economy. I call this the “bad omen” view.”

So what is the state of India, due to which we are witnessing LPR decline?

When the demonetisation was declared sectors that were hit the hardest were the cash intensive sectors like FMCG, construction, service sectors etc. January 2017 report by Crisil highlighted that as many as 41% of 1,100 of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) surveyed said their clients had shifted to cheque or electronic payments since demonetisation, yet the wage decline or job loss in the unorganised sector was on an unprecedented scale. Like most of the unorganised sector, some industries in the organised sector had also suffered due to the slowdown in consumer spending after demonetisation.

The impact of demonetisation was clearly visible from the 5% contraction in production of consumer non-durables and 10.3% fall in production of durables until January 2017. The decline signalled that consumption demand in both rural and urban had been impacted. Two-wheeler sales dropped to a 16-year low in December 2016 and a Nielsen survey over 750 stores (November 2016) reported a 20-40% drop in sales of most of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) goods. (the wire)

So that brings us back to the question of is the decline as bad omen or demographic? For this let us see the LPR before and after demonetisation. The pre-demonetisation average LPR was found to be 47% which fell to 44% in the post-demonetisation period, a sharp (statistically significant) fall of 3 percentage points. As per CMIE data LPR during Jan-Mar 18 was 43.4 percent compared to 46.8 percent during the same period in 2016. The same has also been corroborated by the RBI. This clearly demonstrates that the LPR decline in India is due to crisis engulfing the economy and is not due to demographic change and also that the LPR is due to demand shortage and not due to supply. This is a clear indication of the impending crisis being faced by the economy and a period of recession approaching cannot be ruled out. The government by whatever means and by using its run-of-the-mill economists can only hoodwink the reality, but sooner than later the reality would be in front of us.

On the other hand according to another survey published in the first week of April 2018 on the employment level, 30 percent of respondents believed that the employment level had improved whereas 43 percent said that it has worsened. The gap between the two today stands at 13 percent whereas a year ago it was just 7 percent. And compared to 2014 during the height of Modi wave only 28 percent had responded in negative. Another indicator of the hardships that the working class is facing in their struggle to live. Modi may say anything but the reality is that the majority of the working population of today are deprived of job and hence a decent living. It can easily be inferred then that what kind of future awaits for them, and their family. When a person is unemployed or underemployed it is not only them but their family and children who also suffers; the impact then becomes transgenerational, the children of such family would grow and inherit the same level of economic destitution and would carry on being in the same cesspool of poverty and deprivation. This shall have profound impact on the years to come, both on social and economic condition of the country. In India a section of bourgeoisie think tanks have already started voicing concern about the skill issues and employability of majority of Indian in age of working class population. With growing automation and propagation of Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing segment, this issue of employability would be exacerbated even more. According to a conservative estimate in India around 69 percent of jobs are under threat from automation.

The Modi government on the other hand though clamouring with slogans like “skill-India” have like his other plans has led the people up a blind alley. As reported in Financial Express, About 90 percent of the 3 million people trained are yet to find a job under the program that is designed to provide employment for those trained. (16-10-2017).

Hence it is clear that this government like its predecessor has neither the skill nor will to generate jobs. We would also like to remind our readers that capitalism has no answer to full employment, rather it does not want to generate enough jobs for all. Full employment is death knell for the bourgeoisie profit, the capitalists in order to keep wages low, creates a vast army of unemployed so that they become a constant source of labour for them. On the other hand by eliminating jobs and having a vast pool of unemployed provides them with the opportunity to bargain and also to decrease wages. This phenomenon was termed by Marx as Reserve Army of Labour, i.e. those workers who are searching for job and can be utilised on immediately. Marx termed this as necessary for the bourgeoisie, Relative surplus-population, he wrote in Capital, is the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works. (Marx Capital Vol. III, emphasis by author). He further wrote, “But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost.” (Marx, Capital Vol I)

Having a large reserve army enhance the profitability and increases the accumulation of capital, on the other hand it keeps the wages low, reduction in social benefits is easily achieved and unions can easily be controlled or even barred.

In the wealthy countries of capitalism’s center, labor is struggling to maintain existing wages and benefits against a combined assault by corporations and governments, while conditions of workers in the periphery are even more difficult. The widespread acceptance and adoption of capital’s agenda—”free trade,” “free markets,” greater “flexibility” regarding labor, and reduced social welfare assistance—has led to one group of real winners. Transnational corporations (and their owners and top managers) now have more freedom to produce where labor and other costs are cheap, have their patents protected, and move capital in and out of countries at will. Many workers, unfortunately, are finding that their situation has become more tenuous. (Fred Magdoff and Harry Magdoff, Disposable Workers: Today’s Reserve Army of Labor, Monthly Review, April 2004).

Let us now also analyse the unemployment status from another aspect, so that our critics do not say that we have only presented a lopsided view.

So let us have a look at the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is defined as; “The unemployment rate is a measure of the prevalence of unemployment and it is calculated as a percentage by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labour force. During periods of recession, an economy usually experiences a relatively high unemployment rate” (definition from Wikipedia). Economy with high unemployment rate, loses money or its GDP contracts. It is also a pointer to a weakening of economy and job scarceness. Unemployment rate is has not been discussed in public discourse till now. To arrive at the figure that is denoted in percentage, the number of unemployed people is divided by the number of people in the labour force, which consists of all employed and unemployed people. This indicator is widely used across the world to gauge the state of economy as well as to determine the job scenario. So let us see how it looks for our country?

The World Bank had titled its South Asia Economic Focus, published in Spring 2018, “Jobless Growth?” In the report which used the variable of employment to analyse the state of the economy, and related it to the income levels. The report said that there is a U-shaped relation between employment rate and GDP per capita. The employment rate tends to be high for very poor countries, as many seeks low income employment. This rate falls initially for the richer countries as people there tend to devote more time on education and family (this is particularly for the female workforce). The employment rate then rises further reflecting the economic reality. India has however much lower employment rate compared to its per capita GDP level.

According to the World Bank report, India’s employment rate is 50 per cent, which is significantly lower than the expected rate of about 60 per cent. Although the report presents standardised data, its standardisation is based on official statistics which are too liberal in considering a person to be employed. We believe that India’s employment rate is much lower than the World Bank’s estimate of 50 per cent. Further, and rather worryingly, India’s employment rate has been falling. (taken from CMEI report)

Estimates based on the BSE-CMIE effort to measure employment / unemployment in India show that India’s employment rate averaged at 42.9 per cent between January and October 2016. This is the average for the ten months preceding demonetisation in early November 2016. Then, after demonetisation in November 2016 it fell and has kept falling steadily. In the ten months following demonetisation the average employment rate fell by 100 basis points to 41.9 per cent. And in March 2018, it fell to its lowest level of 40 per cent. (Catching up with the employment rate, 24 Apr 2018, http://www.cmie.com).

India’s jobless growth is a reality and not a myth. For instance writing in The Mint, R. Gopalan and M.C. Singhi, said, “Labour Bureau data indicates that between 2009-10 and 2015-16, incremental jobs created exceeded the number of people who entered the labour force by a wide margin. At an aggregate level, 75 million jobs were created, against 61 million who were added to the list of job seekers. During this period, the overall percentage of people in the age group of 15 and above who were willing to work, both male and female, increased marginally. With employment opportunities outnumbering job seekers by 23%, the rate of unemployment also declined. Contrary to general perception, the period 2009-10 to 2015-16 does not seem to be a period of jobless growth.” (India’s jobless growth is a myth, The Mint, 19 Dec, 2017).

However, this view was countered by others. Vinoj Abhram writing in Economic and Political Weekly , mentioned “India’s employment growth, as recorded by the employment and unemployment survey (EUS) conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), had been slowing down since 2004–05. From about 2% per annum between 1999–2000 and 2004–05, employment growth declined to around 0.7% per annum between 2004–05 and 2009–10, and further slowed down to around 0.4% per annum between 2009–10 and 2011–12”.

Further he writes:

“As per the LB–EUS, estimates based on usual principal status (UPS) criteria for the age group 15 years and above, total employment in India shrunk by about 0.4% per annum, during the period 2013–14 to 2015–16.This corresponds to an estimated reduction in employment for about 37.4 lakh persons during the period 2013–14 to 2015–16. If we consider the total employment based on sectoral estimates then the drop would have been to the tune of 53 lakh jobs (emphasis supplied)

The increase in joblessness has only worsened and it was at the bottom during the period 2015-16.

“It seems that the deceleration of employment growth during the period 2004–05 to 2011–12, has not reversed, but has worsened during the period 2013–14 to 2015–16. Perhaps this is for the first time in independent India that we have an absolute decline in employment, though there had been phases of employment growth being low at around 1% during 1993–94 to 1999–2000 and below 1% during 2004–05 to 2011–12. Employment growth, nevertheless, was positive for rural males, while for all other segments, rural females, urban females and males, all had an absolute decline in employment. The decline in employment was more widespread in the urban areas, while in the rural areas, the drop in employment was limited to”

So, it is clear that even by the government’s own figures, the jobless growth and the deceleration in job generation cannot be ruled out.

Conclusion
The aim of this write-up was to dispel the myth being perpetrated by the government and its numerous agencies, both paid and unpaid about the job creation and economic growth (which we plan to analyse in detail in other article). Economic discussion sometimes becomes too much enmeshed in jargons hence fails to catch up with the common masses. We have tried to analyse it in common language dispelling with as much jargons as we could. By use of various data it has become crystal clear that the country is witnessing a period of unemployment and job loss. This deceleration instead of showing sign of recovery, in fact is exacerbating with the phenomenon taking shape of a trend, i.e a pattern which is constantly going down.

This means that all the plans of Modi like Skill India, Make in India, Sardar Patel National Urban Housing Mission, and PM Rural Housing Mission etc. have all been a failure. For if these programmes would have even achieved their halfway mark we would have seen some sprout in job generation or decline in unemployment rate. That unfortunately is not the case.

In fact on the other hand, the data points in completely opposite direction. If the employment rate is receding and job generation is receding, that is a sign of economy slowing down or even shrinking. Readers are well aware of the statistical manipulation done by various government both in India and world to hide the reality. Same seems to be the case here. The country is recording almost year-on-year growth of 7 per cent yet the decline in job generation is also perceptible.

Of late there has been some group(s) who have been campaigning for enactment of job guarantee act. This in itself is a demand that seems to be as superfluous as that of government claim of job generation. Will capitalism seek to create a system of giving job to all, the answer is clearly no, and then what would happen if the government promulgates such law and says it will give job to all albeit like in MNREGA where a person given job for 100 days is considered as employed. Will that solve the issue? The real problem is not joblessness but capitalist mode of production, and we all are aware capitalism will not be eradicated by Act of parliament. Till the revolutionary class does not overthrow the rule of capital and establishes the rule of working class, unemployment cannot be eradicated.

Any attempt to find solution to this problem within the confines of capitalism would only be a mirage or a way to deceive the working class.

Note:
The following sources were referred for collection of data:
(a) Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)
(b) National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)

All graphs from CMIE website or created by Author