In the last four and a half years of the Modi government, flagship job schemes across the country — which also included some from ‘Make in India’ — could create only 27.5 lakh jobs, a set of central government data revealed.
This is a far cry from the promised 10 crore jobs under Make in India alone, though the target is 2022. The data came just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delivering the last speech of his tenure in the Lok Sabha, said that India created crores of jobs in the last four to five years. He, however, was referring to jobs also in the informal sector and self-employment, of which India scarcely has any data.
Among the three major employment generation schemes, Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), aimed at generating self-employment through micro-enterprises and non-farm sector, created only 17.88 lakh jobs from 2014-2018.
A state-wise data collected by the Centre showed that while the most-populated Uttar Pradesh created almost 2 lakh jobs in four years under PMEGP, the industrially-developed Tamil Nadu came at a remote second generating 1.38 lakh jobs during 2014-18; Maharashtra 1.17 lakh and Karnataka 1.08 lakh.
In another flagship government programme, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY), under which rural youth are skilled in job competencies, only about 5 lakh placements could be made across the country. The scheme was designed to benefit more than 55 million poor rural youth and was a major contributor to the Make in India campaign.
A third scheme — Deen Dayal Antodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) launched by Modi to reduce poverty and vulnerability among urban poor — could see the placement of only 4.72 lakh youth in almost the entire period of Modi government.
These are the three major schemes under which the government provides employment opportunities to rural and urban youth besides skilling them for future jobs.
Besides these, 1080.6 crore man days of work was generated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the crucial four and a half years of the NDA government, the data tabled in the Rajya Sabha showed.
Under MNREGA, at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year is provided to any rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work on demand.