Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claims that anyone opening a 'pakoda' shop on the street should be considered employed "exposes the abject failure" by Modi to create jobs on any meaningful scale, the CPI-M has said.
Modi in an interview last week claimed that someone who opens a 'pakoda' shop on the street should be considered employed. Further, his earning of Rs 200 per day was not reflected in any book of accounts.
Modi also said: "The truth is (a) massive number of people are being employed."
An editorial in the CPI-M journal "People's Democracy" said: "Now we have it from the Prime Minister himself that massive employment has been created by people selling goods on streets. These are the 'self-employed'.
"This is a pathetic claim for Modi to make. It only exposes the abject failure of the Modi government to generate employment and create new jobs on any meaningful scale in the past three and a half years."
The editorial quoted official statistics to say that nearly half of India's workforce (46.6 per cent) was self-employed. Of these 41 per cent make up to Rs 60,000 a year or only Rs 5,000 a month.
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The CPI-M argued that people become "self-employed" when there is no regular employment or jobs available in the formal sector.
"Thanks to the neo-liberal policies, there is a type of economic growth which does not produce jobs, except low-paid jobs in the informal sector and mainly contractual jobs in the organised sector," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said.
"The government has made much of the Mudra scheme to provide loans for the self-employed. Actually 90 per cent of the beneficiaries have got loans of under Rs 50,000, hardly an investment to provide employment of any value."
It said the Modi slogan of "Make in India" had failed to take off. "Manufacturing growth continues to lag behind and the past year has seen many companies resorting to retrenchment of jobs in industry."
--IANS
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