Country's youth marking PM's birthday as 'National Unemployment Day', he must provide jobs: Congress

In a press conference on Saturday, Supriya Shrinate, All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesperson said that the birthdays of Indian Prime Minister’s have over the years been celebrated as special days including Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday as ‘Children’s Day’, Indira Gandhi’s birthday as ‘Communal Harmony Day’ and Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday as ‘Sadbhavna Diwas, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday as ‘Good Governance Day’. However, she said that the current Prime Minister’s birthday is being celebrated as the ‘National Unemployment Day’.

“This is a huge cause of concern, because India is the youngest country in the world with the maximum number of youths here in our country,” she said while expressing concern over the fact that 60 per cent population of working age is either unemployed or not looking for work.

“Even before the first case of Covid-19 was reported and the latest unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent is a hugely worrying thing for our economy and for our population,” she added.

Shrinate further said that while Modi made “tall promises” about two crore annual jobs while he only employed 7 lakh people. “This affects women the most, their participation in the labor market has come down from 26 per cent to 15 per cent,” she explained.

Noting that farmers are protesting for nine long months without a solution in sight, Shrinate said high prices in gas, diesel, petrol, edible oil, pulses, daily essential items are making lives of people difficult. She claimed demonetization and GST have crippled the economy and there has been shutdown of MSMEs and small businesses as a result, as investment in the consumption chain is completely broken.

During the press conference, Shrinate raised several questions:

1.      Where are the 2 crore annual jobs?

2.      Why are 60 lakh jobs in the Centre and the State Governments lying vacant?

3.      Why is it that MSMEs that employ the maximum number of people are at the receiving end of the government's flawed policies?

4.      Why is it that despite praising PM Modi in public, private sector is not willing to invest and hence jobs are not being created? Because investment is an act of faith, isn’t it clear that they don’t believe in the government's policies also? Is the excessive focus on just 1 or 2 billionaires, the ‘Hum Do, Humare Do’ model, leaving out the rest of Indian industry to create jobs?

5.     Why has the government come up with the conspiracy to employ our youth only for 4 years and then retire them at a young age of 23?

While wishing him good luck, Shrinate said that she was pained to see that "the young in this country are celebrating your birthday as the ‘National Unemployment Day’."

“I will only gently and humbly remind you that men in history are not remembered by the monuments that they built, but, by the work that they do for our people,” she said.

The opposition party leaders also greeted Prime Minister Modi on his 72nd birthday and wished him good health and a long life.

"Our ideological and political battles against him continues. His personal vendetta against us intensifies. Even so, here is wishing and greeting our Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 72nd birthday," Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said in a tweet.

Addressing party workers, IYC national president Srinivas BV said since the BJP government came to power, it brought the "gift of unemployment" for the youth of the country. He said the country has a large population of youth of which 60 per cent are unemployed. "This is a very scary situation," Srinivas said, adding that under the BJP rule, the country is facing "economic slowdown" and the youth is "disappointed".

"Narendra Modi had promised to provide 2 crore jobs every year to the youth of the country. According to that, 16 crore youth should have been employed by now. The PM is least bothered about the employment of the youth. He is concerned about the employment of Amit Shah's son Jay Shah," he alleged.

With PTI inputs