The Opposition desperately seeks to make the lack of adequate number of jobs in the economy as an issue in the Lok Sabha campaign. It has been harping on the failure of the government to create new jobs as promised in the run-up to the 2014 poll. That issue had found some resonance also because the then prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, had come with an image of a doer from his decade-plus stint as the chief minister of Gujarat.
People believed in the poll promise, as they well might have in several others which alone would explain the huge win of the NDA last time around. However, more than Modi’s promise it was the mood against the UPA which propelled him to a huge victory. The voter is not so naïve. Over several central and state and not to talk of local bodies’ elections he has come to take poll promises with more than a pinch of salt.
Therefore, if Modi’s critics expect to reap electoral dividend from his unfulfilled promises they might be running counter to the voter experiences. Nehru promised a socialist El Dorado. And a vastly illiterate and simple-minded electorate repeated him as prime minister in successive elections. What that socialism did to the state of our economy we do not have to spell out here.
Suffice to say that Nehru’s old party now takes great pride in dismantling the his socialist pattern of economy. Now they claim to be economic liberalizers. In between Nehru and liberalization his daughter ruled for 17 years. And she swept the electoral board, as it were, on the heady slogan of garibi hatao. That was in 1971. If we still have millions upon millions of garibs with us, it tells you the value an ordinary voter attaches to politicians’ promises.
The short point is that the lack of jobs under the current regime may be good for tu-tu, mein-mein shouting matches in television studios but the voter for whose sake the entire charade is conducted is least concerned. He knows by experience that politicians make promises only not to keep them. Period. Foundation stones of steel mills, hospitals, universities, et al laid by Indira Gandhi back in the 70s were lost in the grassy swamps soon after and remained in that condition for decades.
Of course, we are not justifying the breach of electoral promises, only underlining their fate once the election is over. As for the current job situation, there is no authoritative data to establish the number of new jobs created and the number of unemployed. Of course, formal jobs are easy to enumerate. But a vast majority of jobs are in the informal, unorganized sector.
Modi was not wrong in saying when an unemployed youth with little education and no skills in any of the crafts to become a, say, a carpenter, plumber, electrician, or mason, the kind of skills much in demand in urban and semi-urban areas, starts selling pakoras and tea on a roadside cart, he is able to generate subsistence level income for self and the family.
Being a developing country with a vast population and an insubstantial manufacturing sector, informal sector is the safety-valve which helps people not only from going hungry to bed but, equally importantly, from spilling on the streets for an upheaval in the established order.
It has been like this for as long as we can recall. Yes, people protest when prices of essential, daily-use goods rise inordinately. Governments are known to have lost elections on the price of onions and tomatoes, dal and atta. Happily, this government has managed to keep the price-line well under control. But we cannot recall any election where the jobs, or rather the lack of them has influenced electoral outcomes.
The job market also depends on farm seasons, lack of opportunities in the rural economy, especially after a bad crop, can overnight increase migration to the towns and urban centres. Come to think of it if the country has quietly absorbed an incessant flow of illegal Bangaldeshis, it is only because they find some sort of work here which they didn’t back home.
Quite aside from all this talk about jobs, remember Indians by nature are stoic, accepting what comes their way as the will of god. They don’t rise up against authority the way, say, the French do when the price of petrol is increased by a few cents or their leisure break on work is sought to be reduced by half-an-hour or so.
Therefore, the data collectors can keep on spewing figures about the employment market but it is unlikely to carry conviction with the voter. His concerns lie elsewhere regardless of what the oppositionists might want him to be angry about.
