Govt has failed to fulfil their promise of creating employment: Experts

New Delhi: The NDA government has failed to provide employment in the country despite promising the same during their election manifesto in 2014, say experts.

The experts opine that the key issue of unemployment remained missing even during the recent interim budget before elections. They said that the government has failed to provide relief to the farmers as well as were short at meeting the expectations of the middle-class voters.

The issue of unemployment has become politically sensitive after media reports claimed the country's unemployment rate rose to a 45 year high of 6.1 percent in 2017-18, quoting the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) done by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) despite the government rejecting the findings of this data and calling it "incomplete".

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Prof Prabhat Patnaik, Marxist economist and political commentator, said, "The government is now suppressing the unemployment data. This is something which is now very well known. It has been stated openly in the Parliament, the estimate committee itself has taken a view, which is an adverse view of the government on this particular issue. The reason why the government is suppressing the data is because unemployment situation now is worse than in any time in recent memory. The recent Shimla Bureau data seems to suggest that unemployment today is much worse than in the recent past. The government promised that they're going to create a lot of employment, so this is very embarrassing, and that too just before the elections."

Hours after media published the leaked report of NSSO survey, the government released revised figures showing a surprising growth in the GDP, reaching at 7.2 percent, in the year 2017-18.

Meanwhile, Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Rajiv Kumar, said that there are enough evidences showing that a lot of jobs have been created in the past four years.

"NITI Aayog has actually said that you require the government's permission for making data available, now that is a remarkable situation. This means every government would be suppressing data that is adverse to itself. This is a position which I find completely unacceptable," said Professor Patnaik.

The NSSO survey reportedly was based on data collected between July 2017 and June 2018 and is the first official survey post-demonetisation. The news report further said that unemployment was higher in urban areas at 7.8 percent as compared to 5.3 percent in rural areas of the country.

Earlier, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) had stated that 1.5 million jobs were lost just in the first four months of 2017 -- immediately after demonetisation of old 500 and 1000 rupee notes. The NSSO job report was previously planned to be released in December 2018.