Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set up two Cabinet committees to address the problems of slowing growth and rising unemployment, PTI reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified officials. Modi is expected to head both the panels.
The Cabinet committee on investment and growth will have Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, and Railways and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal as its members.
These ministers will also be on the committee on employment and skill development, along with Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Skill Development MN Pandey, Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar and Housing and Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
Last Friday, the Centre released a report that confirmed unemployment in the country was 6.1% of the total labour force in 2017-’18, the highest in 45 years, as reported by Business Standard in January. The data showed that 7.8% of all employable youth in urban areas were jobless, while the figure was 5.3% in rural areas. Joblessness among men stood at 6.2%, while it was 5.7% in the case of women.
However, Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava said it would be unfair to compare the unemployment rate with that of past years as “a new design” and a new metric had been used for the 2017-’18 calculations.
The same day, India lost its tag of the fastest growing major economy to China after the government announced that the growth rate in its Gross Domestic Product had declined to 5.8% in the last quarter of the 2018-’19 financial year. It was the slowest pace of growth in 17 quarters.
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