Can Kejriwal give 20 lakh jobs in five years in Delhi?
The Hindu
The AAP government needs to give 1,095 new jobs every day to achieve the target; one expert says not feasible, another rues lack of details
New Delhi
Twenty lakh jobs in five years. The promise made by the Delhi government in its ‘Rozgar Budget’ presented last week has left economic experts in the city scratching their heads for the right answers.
What’s bothering them the most is the number being targetted — 20 lakh jobs in 5 years means 1000+ jobs a day.
“I saw the budget and I was surprised. What is he [Deputy Chief Minister] talking about? It doesn’t make any sense. Over 1,000 new jobs every day is an outrage,” said Santosh Kumar Mehrotra, former professor and chair of Centre for Labour at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “It’s not possible,” he added.
The criticism against the government’s promise ranges from the quality of likely jobs being low level to people already having jobs getting new opportunities.
But experts differed on whether 20 lakh jobs can be generated in five years. Pranob Sen, the first Chief Statistician of India, said there are a lot of hope and assumptions built into the promise of 20 lakh jobs and the current details given by the government are not enough to come to a conclusion.
According to Mr. Sen, the “core idea” of the government is correct. “Delhi is driven by the services sector. What they are trying to do is to build on that,” he said.