BJP should apologise for DeMo job losses instead of blaming ‘unskilled’ workers

In their eagerness to defend and laud demonetisation, BJP's spokespersons are reeking of arrogance and are making mistakes that make them convincingly sound like propagandists. That jobs were lost because of demonetisation is accepted even by the government now. What really is the point behind a union minister saying that only those who were not skilled enough lost their jobs?

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on the event of the note-ban's anniversary that only those people who did not enhance their skills lost jobs. Prasad was addressing a press meet in Bhopal as a part of the campaign wherein Union ministers have been asked to fan out across the country to lead celebrations of the anniversary.

Prasad, a BJP spokesperson for over a decade now, has considerable experience of handling the media but is prone to gaffes. He keeps slipping up more these days because of his efforts to compulsively sing paeans to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In this case, he does deserve appreciation for admitting that jobs have indeed been lost but as a senior minister he ought to have shown more sensitivity. Oft-quoted data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a think-tank, has shown that about 15 lakh jobs were lost in January-April 2017 https://www.cmie.com/kommon/bin/sr.php?kall=warticle&dt=2017-07-11%2011:07:31&msec=463.

In May, the Labour Bureau's Quarterly Employment Survey had shown that as many as 1.52 lakh casual and 46,000 part-time jobs were lost during October 2016 to January 2017.

Trade unions, including the one run by RSS, have also talked about “migration caused due to demonetisation” and have slammed the government for not doing anything about it.

During the demonetisation period and even after it, much anecdotal evidence had emerged of lakhs of small factories dependent on cash for day to day operations shutting down overnight. These reports are backed by the Labour Bureau's findings that the maximum decrease of casual jobs was in the manufacturing sector (1.13 lakh).

Workers in those units that shut down earned their livelihood by doing jobs ranging from making garments, automobile parts and plastic goods to making glass items, metal items, electronics, tanning leather etc. Prasad should let people know which of these does he think can be called unskilled.

Irrespective of the level of their skill, these workers comprise over 90% of the country's workforce. They are all largely paid in cash, do not get regular job benefits like a provident fund and insurance and can be fired overnight. Whenever they lose one job they are eventually able to move on to the next because there is a huge demand for the cheap but specialised labour they offer.

Demonetisation shut down unit after unit, eliminating options for those who lost their jobs. They first went to labour chowks hoping to be picked up for casual jobs on daily basis. However, even those jobs had shrunk, forcing them to eventually go back to their villages far away from urban employment centres. A large number of them are yet to come back because the jobs too haven't come back.

Within six months, along came GST and brought a double whammy for small and medium scale industries. The pressure of destocking pre-GST goods for an entire quarter and then the burden of filing a huge number of returns has only lengthened the period of recovery from the shock of demonetisation.

Amidst all this, if the government comes along and tells these workers they lost their jobs because they were not skilled enough is a preposterous thing to do. Didn't they already have their jobs that were helping them make their ends meet with the same level of skill? Were they told that their skill set will be rendered useless overnight?

Moreover, weren't they promised 10 crore more jobs during the Modi government's full term? That promise was in any case nowhere even near realisation and demonetisation caused a huge dent in the job market. That’s a loss that can never me made up for and Modi government should be ashamed of mocking those rendered jobless, when what it should instead be doing is apologise with folded hands.