QPrime Minister Narendra Modi, as usual, repeated his announcements ahead of the budget debate, focusing on the size of the Indian economy. Immediately after coming to power for the second time in 2019, the announcement was made that by 2024-25, the country will be transformed into a five trillion dollar economy and soon it will be able to become the fifth superpower in the world, behind Britain. At the end of 2022, London-based consultancy Center for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) predicted that India would take a leap of $10 trillion by 2035 and become the third largest economy globally by 2037. Such predictions and frenzies of optimism are good. But there is another side to this. The practical side. It is a grim picture of rising unemployment.
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Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) is an authoritative study and research body on unemployment in the Indian economy. In an article written by its managing director and chief executive officer Mahesh Vyas (Business Standard-February 7, 2022), the unemployment rate has declined from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent between December 2022 and January 2023. The average rate for the previous two months was eight percent. From this Dr. Vyas concludes that the typical Indian unemployment rate is seven percent, which is not something to be proud of for a country that claims to be the fastest growing economy in the world. He has also pointed out that only nine countries in the list of 43 countries have higher unemployment rates than India. These are Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 30 countries are better than India in terms of unemployment rate. At the same time, there is also the fact that all of them are under severe threat of economic recession. In a comparative study of unemployment in December 2022, only Greece, Turkey, Colombia, South Africa and Spain fared worse than India, the article said. Even then Narendra Modi and BJP claimed that India is the fastest growing country. Monthly unemployment rates for India are not accurate. This is because most of it is informal in nature in the unorganized sector. A transparent picture of unemployment in the country would be impossible without collecting long-term data. Surveys conducted in September-December 2021 and September-December 2022 after the Covid lockdowns revealed that the seven percent unemployment rate was a persistent phenomenon. This is quite worrying.
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The reason is that new job opportunities have not been created through the process of economic development. In January 2023, there was a decline of 0.95 million in the employment rate. It is also noteworthy that this was something different from the norm. Fluctuations in employment cannot be taken for granted as a reflection of development or changes in climate. One thing is clear; Unemployment, inflation and subsequent price hikes are the biggest problem in the Indian economy. Claiming that the economy is on the path of rapid growth by highlighting the GDP growth rate alone is completely meaningless. It does not create the political genesis of development. In the same January, there is a 5.7 percent drop in the number of unemployed. This does not mean that more jobs have been created, but in that case there would have been a revival in the employment sector. The labor force was shrinking in January. This was driven by two things: one, a 0.95 million job loss, and two, a 5.7 million drop in the number of unemployed. During this period, the employment rate decreased from 40.5 to 39.8 percent. This trend is the most serious challenge facing the Indian economy in the modern era. A labor market contraction occurs when there is a decrease in the availability of jobs. People in this category are not considered unemployed. It is for this reason that the reduction in the unemployment rate is interpreted and the administrations lash out on account of it. They will claim that GDP growth has survived the Covid-19 shocks and continues its upward trajectory. They will conveniently interpret this change in the labor market as quite encouraging. The studies and findings of CMIE, which conducts studies and researches on the employment sectors of the country through more authentic and transparent means than the official agencies, do not give any reason for comfort. No matter how many times Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team repeatedly claim that India will leapfrog to become a $10 trillion economy over the next decade and a half, it is certain that the target will not be met. Dr. Malayali and leading economist. Pulapra Balakrishnan’s argument that only development efforts that balance employment and environmental protection can succeed is worth considering.
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He exposes the fallacy of the claim that the ruling class can solve unemployment by implementing a development strategy that ignores ecology. Prof. that such a development strategy will lead the economy to a ‘dystopia’ situation. Balakrishnan establishes. Modi’s claim that India will transform into a $10 trillion economy in the next 15 years is unrealistic. In the eagerness to make this fantasy a reality, the relevance and importance of ecology is completely forgotten. In effect, the development process will lead to the destruction of the economy itself. Such a catastrophic situation is ‘dystopia’. It means that the economy will go to ruin during the hunt for ‘utopia’. Development strategy and related processes should never produce negative results. On the contrary, it should be creative and produce positive results for social development. On this occasion, Dr. KN Raj’s name comes to mind. There is also a question he raises at a time when the academic debate has intensified the concern that the benefits of economic planning in India are not reaching the bottom of society but are being confined to the elite and the rich. ‘What is the real purpose of development?’ is Is the politics of development or the development of politics preferable? In the discussion Dr. Raj gave priority to the politics of development. The goal of development is to help society move forward. In other words, development is for the people. It should never be in a manner conducive to the achievement of the objectives of the political parties and the ruling class. The process of economic development in India has been moving rapidly in an anti-people direction for the past few decades. Political leadership does not consider negative consequences arising from it. For them, the main thing is not the politics of development, but the development of politics. The biggest victim of this is the youth of the country; What they face is unemployment.