Only two days back, his labour minister had denied of having any data of labourers killed during lockdown while fleeing the cities and work places. While independent agencies have reported enormous job losses in the country, the government has sat tight on its own survey findings. One presumes that Modi government’s departments and agencies have not carried at all any survey to find out actually how many labourers died during that phase. The reluctance may also be to the fact that the work culture and ambience has been completely destroyed at the agencies and departments. Else there is no tenable reason that the government should not have figures and datas.

Labour minister Santosh Gangwar told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that government policies use only official data. Indeed fine. Such type of information must be reliable and dependable and stand no chance for being contradicted. But ironically the Modi government does not have that information too. The government ought to have its own information as “For framing government policies only official data are used, and data captured by non-government agencies are not referred (to)”. Does not it underline complete collapse of the system?

Since the government has made it clear that it would not depend on non-government data, it must clarify that whether in future it would not use the statistics provided by the IMF, International Labour Organisation, the Asian Development Bank and other bodies. Already the ILO and ADB have released a report last month saying 41 lakh youths in India had lost their jobs in the first three months of the lockdown. Incidentally a survey by the Azim Premji University has found that two-thirds of the country’s informal-sector workers lost their jobs during the lockdown.

CMIE managing director Mahesh Vyas has already put the onus on the government saying it was “free to take a view” on whether to take the organisation’s findings into account. True enough this stand of the government is self-defeating and exposes its own lack of complex and also confidence.

Labour economist and former JNU teacher Santosh Mehrotra, currently a visiting professor to the University of Bath in the UK, agreed that it was the government’s prerogative not to use NGO data for policy-making. But, he said, the government should release its own data punctually. In all fairness if the government does not accept NGO data, it should release its own data regularly. But several survey reports by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and the Labour Bureau have not been released despite having been ready long ago. Not releasing the reports is quite intriguing and points to deep rooted malaise that afflicts the Modi government.

The statement of Mehrotra is quite important: “The CMIE survey uses a larger sample than the PLFS. It covers both the organised and unorganised-sector workers, and both the rural and urban areas. It is reliable data. If the government does not accept it, it should explain why not.” The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), conducted by the NSO, releases its findings every quarter. In this backdrop how far is it right to describe as an unreliable data? This simply strengthens the feeling that the government was trying to hide something from the people of the country. Meanwhile NSO is yet to release the Time Use Survey, for which data collection had concluded last December. This survey ascertains what people do from 4am through the rest of the day, thus reflects what proportion of the workforce has jobs.

This development has come just after revelation that unemployment rate has gone down to 23 per cent, higher than pre-lockdown levels and a contraction in India’s GDP, for the first time in four decades, by 23.9 per cent. This is indeed shocking. To what extent this information has affected the youth of the country could be understood from the response of the youths to the birthday celebration of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The students and civil service aspirants gave a call to rebrand Modi’s birthday at a time when the BJP was observing “Sewa Saptah” or service week to celebrate it. These unemployed youths observed the day as National Unemployment Day in protest against the government apathy.

Incidentally the Labour Bureau, which operates under the labour and employment ministry, has failed to release the last four reports of the now-scrapped Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), and the latest report of the Employment and Unemployment Survey, conducted for 2016-17. It is worth mentioning that two external members of the National Statistical Commission quit last year after the government withheld a job survey report.

The nature of the angst that haunted the youth could be comprehended from the fact by that there had been over 4 million tweets using the hashtag “National Unemployment Day” and two other similar hashtags. Days earlier, there had been a youth-fuelled campaign to “dislike” social media content featuring the Prime Minister, with people decrying the lack of jobs and the government’s decision to go ahead with the engineering and medical entrance exams amid the pandemic. The BJP leadership so disheartened at the sight of this development that they were not in the position to speak against it. The “National Unemployment Day” movement bemused the BJP’s famed social media army as well.

The scenario that was visible on the streets of the nation made it categorical clear that Modi has lost much of his charm and image. No doubt the youths have lost their trust in him and are no more ready to believe his words. Coinciding this situation Rahul Gandhi’s tweet that said only 1.77 lakh jobs were available in 20 key sectors while 1.03 crore people were looking for jobs further exposed the hypocrisy of the government. The passive attitude of Modi towards the issue of employment raises the question why he was not realising that employment is dignity. For how long will the Government deny it?”

The most intriguing has been why the government has been concealing the employment data? While the government has failed to release employment data provided by various surveys it alleges that independent agencies have painted a dismal picture of job losses. The question obviously arises; why should any agency paint a dismal picture that too at a time when the people of the country are afraid of the muscle power of the Sangh vigilantes. It is alleged that around 90,000 youths have committed suicide in the last one year because of joblessness, because of loss of livelihood, because of closure of industries. While Modi government does not know how to run the economy it wants to shift all the blame on corona. It is for pushing its failure below the carpet it was hiding data on employment.
(IPA Service)