Today’s India is witnessing fast growth leading to a massive expansion of self-employment opportunities, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday while distributing 71,000 appointment letters under Rozgar Mela via video conferencing.
Addressing the gathering, PM Modi remarked that this is the first Rozgar Mela of 2023 which brings the precious gift of employment into the government fold for the 71,000 families.
The Prime Minister said, "Regular Rozgar Melas have become a mark of this government. They show that whatever resolution is taken by this government is realised."
Modi asserted that in a rapidly changing India, opportunities for employment and self-employment are continuously improving.
He added, "Fast growth leads to a massive expansion of self-employment opportunities. Today’s India is witnessing this."
However, ACCESS Development Services in its 'state of India's livelihoods' report stated that Indian economy’s transition from agriculture to manufacturing and services is not yielding enough jobs nor decent jobs.
It highlighted that India’s gross domestic product (GDP) will need to grow at 18 per cent a year to meet the country’s current job requirement.
The Prime Minister informed that lakhs of employment opportunities have been created in the last eight years with a holistic approach to infrastructural development in the country. He gave the example of a hundred lakh crore investment in the infrastructure and emphasised how a newly built road gives rise to employment opportunities along the path.
Notably, at around 8 per cent, India’s unemployment rate has been rising slowly since 2017 (if we look past the disruption of covid). "But it enormously understates the problem, not only because of all the folks who report ‘employed’ but are clearly under-employed with too little work," the report added.
Meanwhile, of the 470 million reporting in today’s labour force, around 34 million are openly unemployed and the rest in some kind of work, in agriculture (over 200 million), the range of services (150 million), manufacturing (around 60 million) and construction (around 50 million).
Interestingly, Prime Minister mentioned that new markets emerge along the periphery of the new roads or railway lines and makes transportation of food grains from the farm to the field a lot easier while also giving rise to tourism.
“All these possibilities gave rise to employment opportunities”, the Prime Minister added.