WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE PROMISE OF TWO CRORE JOBS

In the year 2014 when the BJP led NDA came to power at the centre and even prior to that while extensively campaigning against the Congress and UPA prime minister Narendra Modi and the star campaigners made every possible promise of a shining India guaranteeing about two crores jobs to the jobless every year including positively bringing back the black money stacked in foreign banks with every household  automatically getting few lakhs in their respective bank accounts.

We should not forget that bringing back extensive amount of black money to India was a major plank of BJP then and Baba Ramdev, now a corporate himself minting hundreds of thousands of crores selling his highly advertised Patanjali products, used to shout from the horse’s mouth to do the needful once the BJP came to power at the centre. Now, three and a half years have elapsed and the BJP led NDA is ruling at the centre and in several states but the prospects of employment generation equalizing the promise of two crores jobs every year as made in 2014 is missing and the issue of bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks is now out of context.

Instead, to sideline the issue and impress the people of India who’d voted for BJP, experiments like demonetization and GST had been implemented all of a sudden putting the electorates into a tizzy and ruthless problems.  What makes the situation more worrisome and shocking is the fact that despite several claims of huge foreign investments in the country and success of the so called demonetization India’s economy unexpectedly slowed down to the three-quarter low, giving unambiguous indications that the business in India is still suffering badly due to the massive money squeeze as well as the disruption just before the introduction of the new GST regime. It’s really shocking and ridiculous that despite making so much of out of context claims about the success of the demonetization the GDP grew 5.7 percent in the last quarter too short than 7.9% witnessed in the same quarter last year.  

This shocking slowdown not only sends disturbing signals on the jobs generation front but also makes our economy tremendously weak. This was even realized and admitted by finance minister Arun Jaitley who earlier claimed of our GDP reaching the 7 or even more higher level. The mining, manufacturing and the construction sectors of the country are in extremely bad shape with over 2.5 lakh or even more small scale industries shut down during the demonetization phase. While the people of the country are still expecting immense positive results under the prime minister Modi’s leadership but even after the lapse of three and a half year after his coming to power and assuming prime ministership nothing substantial has been witnessed in the employment generation and business sector except applying more and more checks on the common public and small and medium entrepreneurs under the guise of demonetization, GST implementation and in the name of improving the tax regime to bring more and more people under the tax net.

Political and economic analysts question- What about the funds and investments from the various foreign countries which prime minister Modi visited during the last three years and what about the promise of providing two crore jobs to the unemployed youth every year. People usually suggest: Had the BJP been serious on providing jobs and generating employment opportunities in the country than to think more on cow vigilantism and polarisation of votes on issues of religious faith the party in power  would have  been able to generate more and more confidence amongst the common masses of the country which is now gradually fading. 

SUNIL NEGI