Modi Says Pakora Selling Is a Job. Nitin Gadkari Disagrees
Instead of getting jobs, people are losing their jobs because the government as well as the industry is in the doldrums.
By Rakesh Raman
Recently, in an interview given to a personal TV channel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had excitedly told the channel worker (it will be wrong to call him a journalist because of his sycophancy to Modi) that the jobless persons in India can start selling Pakoras – an Indian fried dish.
Usually, uneducated vendors sell Pakoras on roadside makeshift shops and earn about Rs. 100 (less than $2) a day. While unemployment has been spreading like a dreaded disease in India, Modi virtually mocked the sorry plight of unemployed youth asking them to sell the low-cost eatables.
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But Nitin Gadkari – a minister in Modi government – asserted Sunday that there are no jobs in India and in a way refuted Modi’s claims that Pakora selling is a job.
Gadkari was responding to questions on the ongoing agitation by the Marathas (a community in India) for reservation in jobs. The minister suggested that people will not be able to get jobs even after reservation because there are no jobs being created in the country.
Although it is often said that Modi had promised in his election campaigns four years ago that he will create 2 crore (20 million) jobs every year, he could hardly create any job in the country. Worse, instead of getting jobs, people are losing their jobs because the government as well as the industry is in the doldrums.
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Estimates suggest that 16 million Indians lost their jobs in the first year of Modi’s government and the joblessness is still increasing exponentially. Currently, it is estimated that 544 million people are unemployed in India’s population of 1.3 billion.
As the unemployment situation is going from bad to worse under Modi government, there are frequent cases all across the country where people with engineering and post-graduate degrees apply for the peons’ posts for which the eligibility for candidates is qualification only up to 5th class. Sad but true!
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
