The government has "utterly failed" to protect the interests of the Indian youth seeking job opportunities in the US and Australia after the two countries tightened rules for work visas.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the decision of the Donald Trump administration to tighten the rules of the H-1B visa programme was "disappointing" as India was its biggest beneficiary.
He rued that various countries were disinclined towards globalisation of labour even though they wanted globalisation of capital.
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"The silence of this government has been absolutely deafening and we do hope that this government realises that young Indians are not forgiving to those who do not honour their promises and complete it.
"Rather than wasting their time on absolutely medieval, reactionary and symbolic issues, this government needs to understand the economic crisis which is engulfing this country and they need to work with the international community to find innovative ways," he said.
Tewari said the Trump Administration's decision to drastically scale back on H1B Visa programme and the Australian government's move to scrap the 457 temporary Work Visa is "extremely disappointing".
"But what is even more disappointing is the fact that the NDA government, which had made tall promises to young Indians in the 2014 election campaign, has completely failed to work with both the American and the Australian governments to try and convey to them the Indian point of view," he said.
He said since the H1B programme started in 1990, India has been the single biggest beneficiary of it as also of the 457 temporary work permit issued by the Australian government.
"So, therefore, these barriers to entry which are going up while you want to have globalisation of capital, globalisation of labour is something which should have been rigorously taken up by the current government," he said.
The Congress leader said India needed to create about 350 million jobs to meet the flow of about a million young Indians who join the employment stream every year, but the NDA government has so far created only 4.4 lakh jobs in the last two years.
Citing a report by a civil society group, he said the situation is very alarming as it states that in the past three years India has lost 55,000 jobs per day.
He also cited a World Bank report that says that 69 per cent of all manufacturing jobs in India are threatened by automation and robotisation.
"Here is the Prime Minister talking about Make-in-India. With empirical statistics put out by the World Bank, to rather than Make-in-India adding jobs, there is a possibility that 69 per cent of the jobs in the manufacturing sector over the next one decade will be lost to automation," he said.
Tewari said this government has completely and absolutely failed to preserve and protect it despite NASSCOM and other industry bodies making noise over the last two months trying to independently lobby the US government on H1B visa programme.
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