India’s unemployment crisis: is this the end for Modi?

You’d have thought that a politician presiding over the world’s fastestgrowing major economy would have no trouble getting re-elected, said the Hindustan Times (New Delhi). But it may not pan out that way for India’s PM, Narendra Modi, in the elections this spring. His party, the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), can boast about India’s 7% growth rate, but in a democracy of 814.5 million voters, growth isn’t “the be all and end all of economic policy”: the fruits of it must be spread equally. And they aren’t. In its 2014 election campaign, the BJP had made big promises about creating more jobs. In the technology sector it has done so, but in the informal economy where 80% of India’s workforce is employed, it has conspicuously failed. There are nowhere near enough jobs being created to absorb the estimated ten million young people entering the job market each year. A report by the National Sample Survey Office has now disclosed that last year’s unemployment rate was 6.1%, the highest it has been in 45 years.

The government tried to sit on that report, and no wonder, said The Indian Express (Noida): it’s terrible news for Modi. Alas for him, it was leaked to the press after the only two nongovernment members of the National Statistical Commission resigned in protest at the report’s suppression. The government is now rubbishing its own report, insisting that it’s “economic absurdity” to claim such a fast-growing economy isn’t creating new jobs, said Zeenat Saberin in Al Jazeera (Doha). But it’s the other way round: many economists think government statistics have grossly overstated the growth data. Creating more jobs would have been a hard ask of any government, said Somesh Jha in Business Standard (New Delhi). But Modi’s has made it that much harder. In 2016, in a bid to flush out the illicit and forged cash that funds crime, it suddenly cancelled 500 rupee (£5.50) and 1,000 rupee notes. A chronic shortage of cash ensued: workers and farmers went unpaid; small businesses collapsed; 3.5 million jobs were lost.

Modi faces another challenge, too, said Kanchan Srivastava in Asia Times (Hong Kong): Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, younger sister of Rahul Gandhi, making an unexpected entry into the political arena. She is to lead the Congress Party, main rival to the BJP, in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Unlike her brother, she has the common touch; and she bears an “uncanny” resemblance to her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, the revered former PM. Uttar Pradesh, currently a BJP stronghold, is a key state, with the largest number of deputies. If Priyanka proves a hit with voters, Modi may have to look for another job.