Gujarat ground reports by The Quint have shown employment is a burning concern for the 64 percent working-age population of Gujarat. The Patidar agitation, and its leader Hardik Patel, has harboured this discontentment in the youth, which has become impossible to ignore, in the run up to the Gujarat elections.
However, to understand the nature of the problem on a large scale, The Quint did some of its own digging by filing RTIs to Gujarat government departments.
RTI responses received from the Government of Gujarat along with calculations done relying on Census 2011 challenge the government’s claim of unemployment levels ahead of Gujarat elections 2017.
The Magic Number, How Many Are Unemployed in Gujarat?
57-year-old Manibhai Parmar works as a farmer in Dharmaj village in Anand district, southeast of Ahmedabad, and earns Rs 100 a day.
He has two daughters, both in their 20s, who have been unsuccessful at finding a job. They have even uploaded their bio-data on the state’s employment exchange, hoping they would receive a call for a government job but have had no luck so far.
The employment exchange is where one goes to get a government job. Of all the RTIs filed (read Gujarat Unemployment: 8 RTI Queries, 1 Answered and 7 Stonewalled) the only department to have responded was the Directorate of Employment and Training.
The department said there were 5,87,263 job seekers registered with employment exchanges as of 31 March 2017.
Employment Exchanges Not Truly Representative of Unemployment
A decade or more ago, employment exchanges saw long lines. This is where people would go after completing their education in order to get a government job.
Reports however state that only about 30 percent registrations at the employment exchange actually translate to real jobs. Faced with a harsh reality, Manibhai's two daughters continue to wait at home unemployed despite completing their degrees.
Hence, the viability of the employment exchange has fallen over decades and isn't the first resort to find employment for the youth anymore.
Fact Check: 0.9% Unemployment Rate
But, in spite of its limitations, we only have these numbers to rely on so we are going to try and make sense of it.
We know that 5,87,263 people are seeking employment.
CM Rupani's claims of 0.9 percent unemployment makes Gujarat the state with the second best unemployment rate, second only to Daman and Diu.
Note to self while reading stories on unemployment that strive to go beyond anecdotal evidence to understand the problem on a larger scale – the compilation of reliable data on employment and unemployment is sketchy at best.
1: Now if we assume that those registered with the employment exchange are the youth (15-25 years as defined by the census ), and make up 1 crore 16 lakh of the total population of Gujarat.
Then, those seeking employment make up 5.04 percent of the population. This is higher than the national unemployment rate.
2: If we take a more conservative estimate, of assuming that those registered with the employment exchange are the working-age population (15-59 years as defined by the census), and make up around 3 crore 85 lakh of the total population. Then, those seeking employment make up 1.5 percent of the population, which is not higher than the national average of 5 percent.
Claims of unemployment by the government of Gujarat don't seem to add up at a time when promises of a solid job determine people's votes. An opinion poll conducted by India Today-Axis My India reveals that while 31 percent of the people in Gujarat felt inflation was their biggest concern, 24 percent said employment was the biggest election issue this year.
While we are in the midst of election fever, one thing that stands clear is that the candidate who will confirm the fulfilment of the people’s demands for employment will swing votes in his/her favour in the election results come 18 December.
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