By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Amidst a serious threat to Indian jobs due to global uncertainties, trade wars, automation, deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the fast-changing world of work in India, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi just employed a rhetorical device in a bid to tickle a little the issue of joblessness. The employed are under deep anxiety of losing jobs, and the jobseekers under great duress in search of quality employment, the opportunities for which have been dwindling fast in the last decade. The very livelihoods of the people are at stake, primarily on account of failure of the government, but PM tries to channelize the ire of the people towards an “infiltration conspiracy”.
“I would like to alert the nation about a concern, a challenge. Under a well-thought-out conspiracy, country’s demography is being changed, seeds of a new crisis are being sown. Infiltrators are snatching away the livelihood of the youth of my country. Infiltrators are targeting the sisters and daughters of my country. This will not be tolerated. These infiltrators mislead innocent tribals and capture their land. The country will not tolerate this,” he said, addressing the nation on Independence Day. He even announced the launch of a high-power demography mission, aimed at addressing population dynamics and safeguarding opportunities for Indian citizens.
This is the first part of his rhetoric that he used to divide the working class on religious lines, focusing on Hindu majoritarian approach. By now we all have been witnessing how in the name of illegal Muslim migrant from Bangladesh and Rohingyas from Myanmar, a religious divide is being created among the Indian Muslims and Hindus. This vertical divide can even be seen among the labours, farmers, and all sections of working class, even among the unemployed, through RSS supported unions and organisations.
The worst has been seen recently in the efforts of BJP led governments in the country who targeted Bengali speaking Indian Muslims from West Bengal. Many of the migrant Bengali speaking workers from West Bengal have been rounded up and even illegally pushed into Bangladesh on gun point who have to be repatriated to India when West Bengal government objected to it. Its sole political purpose is to portray TMC and its chief Mamata Banerjee anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim and Muslim infiltrators.
The same is being done in Bihar during Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Roll in Bihar, to malign INDIA bloc parties, as anti-Hindu and pro-Muslims and pro-Muslim infiltrators. Election Commission of India is being used for this purpose both in case of West Bengal and Bihar, and as ECI has announced, the same SIR will be repeated across the country. PM Narendra Modi’s announcement from the Red Fort signals that the issue of undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh, will be used for great divide of the country on communal lines. It is not without reason that PM Modi has praised the RSS from the Red Fort, an organisation that is working for reducing the secular democratic and socialist India into a Hindu Rashtra.
PM Narendra Modi may be thinking generating sensation of livelihood issue, and dividing the working class, both the employed and the unemployed, on communal lines, is beneficial for him and RSS-BJP clan, but it certainly does not address the cores issue of joblessness in the country and the threat under which India’s jobs are now put together in the fast-changing world of work.
Shrinking of government jobs under PM Narendra Modi led government is an open secret. Union government has itself resorted to reduce the quality jobs it has been making available by contract and outsourcing of the works to private or even informal sector. Offloading of manpower from Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) is also being done through this strategy. Additionally, PSUs are systematically being guillotined to defame them and finally being put to privatisation bloc. Thus, employment opportunities have been on the fast decline in PSUs too.
Another stark reality is that, above 90 per cent of the workers who have some sort of jobs in the country are engaged in informal jobs, both in the informal sector and the formal sector. They don’t have any social security coverage as an employee which means, they don’t have ESI’s health security, or EPFO’s provident fund and family pension facilities. These jobs are therefore called insecure and low-quality jobs with very low wages or earning on which workers are somehow surviving. Almost 20 per cent of the workers enumerated as employed by the Union Government are actually unpaid household people, and over 57 per cent are self-employed.
Only less than 10 per cent workers are in the private sector, for which PM Narendra Modi has announced the PM Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana, that is the Employment Linked Incentive Scheme. It means, PM Modi has nothing much to offer to above 90 per cent of the workers which are informally employed.
ELI scheme was announced in the Union Budget 2024-25, but could not be launched. We have even lost 4 months in the current budget year 2025-26, and the scheme is launched from August 15, to be applicable from August 1. The scheme is just for two years. Why the government could not implement the scheme for the last 16 months? It is chiefly because the private sector companies were hesitant in joining the scheme, apart from the government was not itself ready with policy and the technology. The scheme is to be implemented by EPFO.
PM Narendra Modi has announced that those youth who will be joining the private jobs will be given Rs 15,000 under the scheme. The scheme aims to benefit 3 crore young Indians, strengthening the bridge from Swatantra Bharat to Samriddha Bharat. It should be noted that the scheme is for the private sector employers who will be given subsidies worth Rs1 lakh crore, for giving jobs and making them members of EPFO.
The scheme is being launched at a time when the fate of MSMEs in particular and industries in general in the countries are under threat of losing huge orders due to trade war. For many, it has been existential crisis. MSME’s contribution in Indian exports was 45.79% in May 2024. MSMEs employ 62 per cent of the workforce in the country which is around 11 crore. Therefore, it is highly doubtful that the ELI scheme is going to work for creation of the quality jobs in the country.
Only time would tell us the real fate of the scheme, but what we know so far is that the government’s schemes or skill and jobs front are not performing well. For example, Last year, a promise of 1 crore internships was made from Rs1 lakh crore, but only less than 10,000 internships were realised.
In brief, the announcement made by PM Narendra Modi from Red Fort has shattered the hopes of the jobseekers and employed both, because they don’t address the core problem due to which there is large scale joblessness in the country, and the threat looming large over the existing quality jobs even in the private sector. The Government has no plan to increase the number of jobs in the government sector and PSUs. Working class has been facing great difficulties with falling real wages, due to price rise. For both employed and unemployed, there seems to be hard days ahead. While dividing working class on communal line is dangerous, giving temptation of ELI to youth is worthless, especially when creation of large number of jobs has become doubtful in the private sector many of which are staring at a prospect of struggling for their own survival. (IPA Service)
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