New Delhi: With Haryana emerging as the No. 1 state in India in terms of its poor unemployment rate, Yogendra Yadav’s Swaraj India has decided to make the Manohar Lal Khattar government’s failure to provide employment to the youth a major poll issue in the upcoming assembly elections.In a recent report, titled “Unemployment in India, January-April 2019 and released by Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy (CMIE), the state won the dubious distinction of being rated only behind Tripura among all the states in “unemployment rate”. As against the national figure for unemployment of 6.9%, Haryana lagged at 20.5% – nearly thrice as much.Making a poll issue out of the state’s dismal performance in matters of job creation and employment, Swaraj India national president Yogendra Yadav, while addressing the media in Chandigarh at the release of the second list of party candidates, accused the BJP government of hiding the real state of unemployment from the people. He also cautioned Khattar against misleading the people on the issue of employment during his ongoing Jan Ashirvaad Yatra.Also read: RTIs Reveal Modi Govt’s Indifference Towards Unemployment, ApprenticeshipSwaraj India also presented data and facts to buttress its claims that the BJP government has failed abysmally in promoting the economy and creating jobs. “The BJP is using the 18,000 Group D jobs, to hide the bigger reality of lack of job generation,” said Yadav.19 lakh people unemployed in HaryanaYadav said the CMIE report was based on the most credible survey based data-series on employment, which has estimated that there are about 19 lakh unemployed persons in Haryana.This unemployment has got little to do with education level as all categories of people are suffering, he said. The report has stated that of the unemployed as many as 16.14 lakh were educated (matriculation or above) and 3.88 lakh had achieved higher education (graduate or above).20-24 age group worst affectedSwaraj India said the unemployment in the youth in the 20-24 year age group was the “most frightening”. “The unemployment rate among those whose highest degree was 10th or 10+2 was as high as 29.4%. The most frightening situation is among the youth aged between 20 and 24 who are looking for employment: their unemployment rate is astronomical at 64% – as of the 17 Lakh youth in Haryana in this category, as many as 11 lakh are unemployed,” the report stated.With the status not having changed in the past few month, the party accused the BJP government of doing little to correct the situation. It also recalled that according to Government of India’s own NSSO report for 2018 too, the unemployment level in Haryana was nearly twice the national average.Also read: How Will Haryana’s Precarious Identity Politics Play Out in the 2019 Elections?The party said the BJP had in its 2014 assembly election manifesto promised that “all the young men and women registered with the Employment Offices will either be given jobs or honorarium against work, and thus the list of unemployed will be wiped out from the Employment Offices.” But, it said, “in reality, the government’s own records show that it did nothing of that kind.”Only 0.04% applicants got jobsCiting RTI replies by the District Employment Offices of 15 districts, the Swaraj India said there were 15.14 lakh unemployed people on the registers, of which only 647 had been provided employment. This amounted to a mere 0.04% of the applicants.However, Yadav said, instead of acting on this report, the Government of Haryana acted against the officers who had revealed the information. “Later, in a reply on the floor of the assembly on February 26, 2019, the government claimed that the number of registered unemployed was only 6.18 lakh. Of these the government claimed to have provided employment to 2,461 – this too works out to only 0.4%.”Also read: As Economists Bicker Over Jobs Data, Underemployment Chokes Young GraduatesGovernment adds Ola, Uber, security guard jobs to its kittyBut while the Haryana government clearly failed to provide employment to even 1% of those registered with it, Yadav said it has gone ahead and counted all jobs created in the state, include those by private transport aggregators like Ola and Uber and private security firms, to inflate the figure of jobs provided to 49,000.Yadav also declared that his party would launch the Jan Sarokar Abhiyan from September 1 to expose all the shortcomings of the Khattar government and to nail the lies of the chief minister.
