Job data row: BJP hits back with Mussolini taunt after Congress chief Rahul Gandhi dubs PM Modi as ‘Fuhrer’

In a stinging attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today said that the leaked job data shows that the NDA government has pushed India into a ‘national disaster’. Dubbing the Prime Minister as ‘Fuhrer’, Gandhi said that, “unemployment is at its highest in 45 yrs.” The Congress chief’s blazing attack comes after a national daily reported about the job crisis in India. The assessment by the National Sample Survey Office conducted between July 2017-June 2018, showed the unemployment rate stood at 6.1 percent, the highest since 1972-73, Business Standard reported on Thursday.

“NoMo Jobs! The Fuhrer promised us 2 Cr jobs a year. 5 years later, his leaked job creation report card reveals a National Disaster. Unemployment is at its highest in 45 yrs. 6.5 Cr youth are jobless in 2017-18 alone. Time for NoMo2Go. #HowsTheJobs,” Gandhi said on Twitter.

The BJP didn’t waste any time and hit back at Gandhi with Mussolini jab. “It's clear that he has inherited Mussolini's shortsightedness and has myopic understanding of issues. EPFO's real data shows sharp increase in jobs, created in just the last 15 months. Only a man who hasn't ever held a proper job & is totally jobless can peddle such #FakeNews!,” the ruling party said on Twitter.

The report comes a day after shock exit of two external members from the National Statistical Commission. The two external members had quit over their differences with the Centre over job data. "We found that the commission was not very effective in discharging whatever it was supposed to do. And in recent times we thought we were being sidelined or we are not taken very seriously," Mohanan was quoted as saying by NDTV. Now, the Business Standard report said that joblessness stood at 7.8% in urban areas compared with 5.3% in rural areas. The data is significant because this was the first comprehensive assessment of the employment situation conducted after Modi government’s November 8, 2016 decision of demonetization, the report said.

However, the stunned government had issue clarification after the resignations and said that the external members complaining about difference of opinion never said anything during the meetings of the National Statistical Commission.

On the concerns regarding the labour force survey, the Centre said that, “the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been designed to yield annual estimates of the labour force on employment and unemployment along with quarterly estimates for the urban areas. NSSO is processing the quarterly data for the period July 2017 to December 2018 and the report will be released thereafter. Keeping in view India’s strong demographic dividend and around 93% of the informal workforce, it is important to improve measures of employment through administrative statistics and complemented by periodic surveys. In this direction, the Ministry has started bringing out estimates of new subscribers/members enrolling in large social security schemes like the Employees’Provident Fund (EPF), Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Scheme and the National Pension Scheme (NPS).”