Statistics has come a long way from the time when the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli observed: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics is now an accredited branch of applied mathematics; statistical methods are routinely used to prove or disprove theories in fields as far apart as economics and medicine.

Statisticians would, however, shudder to see the use to which statistics is put in the current Indian political discourse, where every mistake known to statistical analysis is deliberately committed to prove doubtful hypotheses. In an article in a leading newspaper on 28 April 2018, relying on CMIE data (Government data on employment having been discontinued), a Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council concluded that 15 million jobs were created in 2017, as against an average of 4 million jobs per year in UPA times. Shortly thereafter, in another article in the same newspaper, the Managing Director of CMIE, observed that the claim of creation of 15 million jobs was absolutely false; rather incomparable data sets, cherry-picking, and dubious statistical analyses were behind the claims of robust employment growth.

According to the MD, only 1.4 million jobs were added in 2017. Again, on 2 May 2018, in an article in another newspaper, a former Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog, claimed that instead of the generally accepted figure of 12 million job entrants in a given year, the number of job entrants was only 7.5 to 7.8 million per year. This naturally left readers confused; all economists involved in the debate were highly respected, yet all were canvassing diametrically opposite conclusions, like historians debating the outcome of the battle of Haldighati.

Moreover, a conjoint reading of what both Government economists had written would have us believe that job creation was galloping at twice the rate at which job-seekers were entering the job market. This is palpably false; according to CMIE data the number of unemployed in India was 53 million in December 2021, an additional 17 million were willing to work, if work was available.

According to World Bank data India’s employment rate (ratio of the employed to the total working age population) was 43 per cent, much below the global rate of 55 per cent and even below that of Bangladesh (53 per cent) and Pakistan (48 per cent). In this perspective, our demographic dividend that envisages India’s working-age population growing by roughly 9.7 million per year during 2021-31 and 4.2 million per year during 2031-41, would have frightening consequences for our society. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that we are facing an employment crisis, with the IITs reporting placement of hardly 60 per cent and many of the engineering and management colleges that had mushroomed in the economic boom between 2000 and 2008, having closed down.

Underlining the lack of suitable job opportunities, there are a number of instances where advertisements for recruitment on some few posts of constables and peons, had got thousands of responses with many of the applicants having engineering, MBA, and post-graduate qualifications. Recently, violent protests by railway job applicants in UP and Bihar sent the police on overdrive; elections being round the corner, the Government struggled for an appropriate response.

It appears that the Railways had announced a mega-recruitment drive in 2018; 2,83,747 vacancies were notified in 2018-19, for which more than 4 crore applications were received and 1,32,000 appointments were made. The current agitation is in respect of 35,000 odd vacancies in the Non-Technical Popular Categories for which around 1.25 crore candidates had applied. Tests were conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, and results were declared in December 2021 and January 2022, after which, candidates were told that the tests they had appeared in were the first stage and another round of tests were to follow, which led to the present unrest.

Many questions remain unanswered. Most of the applicants were from poor backgrounds and the vacancies were for lower Group C posts carrying a paltry pay, so, should the recruitment process have been spread over three years with more than one level of testing? Should not the railways fill up their vacancies annually instead of having mega-recruitment drives? In light of the fact that the railways collected thousands of crores 0f rupees from applicants, by charging fees between Rs.500 to Rs.2,500, should not the railways have hired some competent agency for conducting the recruitment test? Despite the unemployment rate in December 2021 being 7.9 per cent, the Finance Minister in a recent speech in Parliament claimed that all was well on the employment front with unemployment back at pre-Covid levels.

What the FM had left unsaid was that the quality of employment had declined significantly; compared to pre-pandemic times, salaried jobs had declined, the number of business persons had declined, and so had small traders and daily wage labourers.

In a denouement of classical economic theories, which posit that as countries develop, people steadily move from the primary sector (agriculture) to the secondary sector (manufacturing) and then to the tertiary (services) sector, the Indian economy is seeing a movement in the reverse direction ~ the decline in employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors was accompanied by an increase in the number of farmers by 9.6 per cent.

Today, most of the jobs on offer in the private sector are not conventional jobs, but ‘gig’ jobs, like drivers for Ola and Uber, delivery boys for Swiggy and Zomato, and repairmen for Urban Company. “Gig” jobs, are those jobs for which workers are paid for each individual gig (piece of work) they do ~ such as food delivery or a car journey ~ instead of monthly salary/day’s wage/hourly wage. “Gig workers” reduce operational costs, therefore, companies like Uber employ “gig” workers on a large scale. The downside is that gig workers cannot be relied on for confidentiality and proper teamwork, which lessens the quality of their output.

Following the lead of the private sector, Government has also started outsourcing its ministerial and menial work in a big way which results in poor service to the public, and also reduces job opportunities. What are called “gig” jobs today were more correctly classified as underemployment by economists like John Maynard Keynes. Learning a lesson from the rampant underemployment during the great Depression, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics calculates the “Underemployment Rate” every month from 1948. Regrettably, underemployment is not recognised as an issue in India; no underemployment statistics are maintained by the Government.

Maybe, for this reason, our leaders treat jobs created by the “gig” economy on par with regular jobs, little realising that a rising level of “gig” employment is a symptom of a slowing economy and “gig” jobs are slow poison for workers because “gig” workers work for extremely long hours in pitiable conditions. Labour laws classify “gig” workers as independent contractors which means they have no fixed working hours, no protection against unfair dismissal, no right to redundancy payments, and no right to receive the national minimum wage, paid holidays or sickness pay.

“Skill India” and “Make in India” can be excellent catalysts for employment generation but the outcome has been sub-optimal because the Government appears to care more for headline numbers, planning to achieve a $5 trillion economy by subsidising big business.

The latest Government initiative, Production Linked Incentive envisages a subsidy of Rs 1.76 lakh crore for manufacturers in various spheres, none of which is labour intensive. A much larger number of jobs would have been created by investing the same amount of money in rural jobs and infrastructure. A long-term strategy could be to link our education system to requirements of trade and industry, ensuring that a student coming out of the education system has requisite skills for the jobs on offer and there is no oversupply in any discipline.

The New Education Policy (NEP), does not have this clear objective, but NEP does have the commendable intention of promoting vocational education. However, given the paucity of institutions imparting vocational education, a shortterm strategy is also required. Sadly, there was no mention of unemployment in the FM’s Budget speech nor did the Budget propose any scheme to address unemployment.

Probably, the Government could have stepped in with a well-structured employment generation programme to ameliorate the misery of the unemployed and underemployed youth. We would do well to remember Oliver Goldsmith’s words, written two and a half centuries ago: “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay” (The Deserted Village)

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)