Union Minister Arun Jaitley Sunday rejected criticism of giving a 'jobless economic growth', saying the absence of any major social or political agitation in the last five years indicates government schemes have created employment.
In an interview to PTI, Jaitley, who is here for medical treatment, justified the absence of any major mention of job creation in the Interim Budget presented on February 1, saying such budgets are different from the normal budget speeches as they are more like "a report card and a road map."
Jaitley said it is not as if "suddenly in five years the productivity levels in India have gone up that all organisations are now running with half their staff. The empirical evidence is to the contrary."
"In the earlier eras, when we used to speak of parallel economy, one of the concerns was that the parallel economy doesn't reflect in the GDP. Therefore, when all were compelled to deposit 86 per cent of India's currency into the banks, and now had to use cheques and credit cards for the future payments, the number of digital and banking transactions increased."
Asked about the 2019 general elections, he said, "The agenda will be Modi vs chaos."
Some of the aspirants, he said, have "low level of understanding of public issues as the public discourse has shown and some have a scandalous record at governance."