Shamika Ravi considers the quality of jobs an issue and believes that public data should not be held by the government.
Unemployment and grim data on jobs were key concerns in India in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections and through the four phases of voting that have taken place. Senior economist and member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) Shamika Ravi, on the other hand, does not believe it is worrisome.
Ravi, in an interview, questioned the credibility and the reliability of the data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) which paints a bleak picture for jobs in the economy. She believes that it is the localised markets in India where jobs are created, and those must be studied to get a more accurate idea.
According to Ravi, unemployment rates in Gujarat and Karnataka are at 0.9 percent and 1.4 percent respectively and much higher in Kerala at 13.5 percent.
She considers the quality of jobs an issue and believes that public data should not be held by the government.
In the estimates released by CMIE for the last week of April, unemployment rates fell from 8.4 percent in the previous week to 6.5 percent. However, Mahesh Vyas, the chief executive of CMIE, said that this might not be a reason to celebrate as the fall was temporary and very different from the monthly numbers.
He attributed the 8.4 percent unemployment rate to the increase in the labour force participation due to the ongoing elections. He said the government shouldn't feel better just because of a fall in one week's data. He also said the Centre should refrain from holding back data regarding jobs as it had been doing.
Yogendra Yadav, the national president of Swaraj India, also stressed on the fact that Modi government's performance on jobs throughout the five years should be assessed rather than recent monthly numbers. Yadav said, when the government came to power, the crisis of jobless economic growth was already there, and it only got worse in the current government's tenure.
