Vajpayee delivered on 1 crore per year job creation promise: there is proof now

[Guest dada_rocks]

http://www.covert.co.in/010708/yashwant.htm WE DID A GOOD JOB, & THERE’S PROOF NOW Did the economic policies of the NDA government lead to jobless growth? Did they increase the rural-urban divide? These questions were debated furiously in Parliament and outside during our tenure in office and an impression was sought to be created by our opponents that we were anti-poor and anti-rural areas. These charges were not based on facts, since facts were just not available. Each one, therefore, felt free to interpret these non-existent facts in the light of his or her own predilection and ideological preference. In its Agenda for Governance of 1999 the NDA had promised to create one crore employment opportunities every year. I remember how Prime Minister Vajpayee was repeatedly riled in Parliament on this issue and how any claims made on whatever information was available with us then were ridiculed by the Opposition. Sonia Gandhi even went to the extent of describing our assertions as “Mungeri Lal Ke Haseen Sapneâ€. Fortunately, we now have information from various sources on the basis of which this issue can be examined dispassionately, objectively and with facts and figures. Yes Miss Itali some people can deliver on Mungeri lal ke haseen sapne. Employment figures become available to us with a lag longer than other figures relating to the economy. Throughout the time that the NDA was in power, dependable employment figures had not become available. Vajpayee’s claim, therefore, could easily be challenged. The first figures relating to this period were made available through the National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) 61st round of survey conducted between July 2004 and June 2005 and published early last year. The earlier survey for the period 1993-1994 to 1999-2000 had estimated that employment growth had risen only by 0.98% annually during this period. Since this was considerably below the rate of growth of population as well as of the labour force, it gave rise to the feeling that while economic growth was taking place, it was sans employment growth and the same trend must have continued during the NDA regime also. The 61st round has effectively demolished this thesis. This round has shown that employment growth increased from an annual rate of 0.98% in the earlier period to 2.89% in the period 1999-2000 to 2004-05. As the Economic Advisory Council of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in its “Economic Outlook†report for 2007-08 published in July 2007 has noted “interestingly there was also a sharp acceleration in the rate of growth of the labour force from 1.03% in the first period to 2.93% in the second. This unprecedented growth in labour force which was above the population growth rate could have had serious implications for the unemployment scenario had it not been for the sharp increase in the workforce employed. This increase in employment growth is also corroborated by the recently released OECD paper on labour markets and other studies.†This impressive increase in employment resulted in the creation of 60 million jobs in the five-year period between 2000 and 2005. If we compare it to the promise made in the National Agenda for Governance of the NDA to create one crore jobs annually, we can say without fear of contradiction that the target was more than met. As the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister has noted “the most striking feature of this growth is that the absolute number of workers has increased across all sectors of the economy in 2004-05 from the 1999-2000 levelsâ€. The latest survey on job growth during this period is contained in the Economic Census which was released on 29 May 2008. This Census covers the period between 1998 and 2005. According to this survey compiled by the Central Statistical Organisation, employment grew at 2.78% in the period 1998-2005 compared to a growth of only 1.75% recorded during the period 1990-1998. What is significant is that the employment growth rate in rural areas during this period was 3.88% compared to 2.22% during the previous eight-year period. In the urban areas, it was 1.70% compared to 1.34% in the previous period. Rural areas, therefore, recorded faster growth in employment than urban areas. Millions of Indians shifted to jobs in the retail trade, manufacturing and allied agricultural activities like livestock farming and fishing. This high economic activity in the rural areas is further corroborated by the fact that in 2005, 100 million people were in business establishments as owners or employees, and more than half of them were in rural areas. The growth in the number of enterprises matched the rise in employment. The same conclusion was reached, as already noted, by the OECD survey. These studies, thus, clearly demolish the uninformed, unsubstantiated and malicious allegations against the NDA rule that our economic policies had led to jobless growth and had further widened the gap between the urban and rural areas. The facts brought out by the UPA government’s own documents should finally put to rest all these false charges against the Vajpayee government. Yashwant Sinha is a former Minister for Finance and External Affairs