Unemployment high in India due to govt’s “ill-considered demonetisation decision”: Manmohan Singh

The Tribune (March 2, 2021)

Attacking the Centre, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said unemployment is high in the country and its informal sector is in shambles following the “ill-considered demonetisation decision” taken by the BJP-led government in 2016.

He also criticised the central government for not holding regular consultations with the states.

Inaugurating a development summit virtually organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Development Studies, an economic think tank aligned to the Congress ideology in poll-bound Kerala, Singh said temporary measures by the central government and the RBI to paper over the credit problem cannot blind us to the looming credit crisis ahead that could affect the small and medium sector.  (Contd.)

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/unemployment-high-in-india-due-to-govts-ill-considered-demonetisation-decision-manmohan-singh-219505

>>> Comment:

Most of India's current woes, including the lack of jobs and accusation of democracy in decline in India, are a result of flawed policies of previous Govts. (1950s, 1960s, 1970s and so on).

For example,

(1) Rather than dealing with the issue of poverty and illiteracy among people logically and fairly and granting assistance according to the economic necessity of potential recipient, the Govt. implemented initially the practice of quota / reservation based on caste (ancestral occupation label as a group of people) in education and jobs.

Furthermore, to garner votes in elections from caste blocs,  the Govt. and political parties subsequently continued the policy of caste reservations / quotas in education and jobs, while increasing the percentage of caste quota recipients and adding new castes as quota recipients before each election.

This naturally deprived many poor and deserving people from non-quota castes in getting Govt. help in education and jobs, while the Govt. aid in education and jobs flowed unnecessarily and freely to many people in quota castes who happened to be educated and well-to-do and did not  require assistance from Govt. in education and jobs.

The caste reservations / quotas from Govt. in education and jobs would unfortunately also harden the feeling and attitude of people on caste thus prolonging the caste system and adding to casteism in society, while the caste reservations in education and jobs would also undermine and prove detrimental to fairness, efficiency, competitiveness and enterprising spirit in education and at work place.

(2) Instead of implementing the UCC (uniform civil code: one law for everyone nationally, irrespective of race, religion, gender and caste), the Govt. implemented officially the use of separate religious laws for different communities while chanting the mantra "We and India are secular."

But that makes little sense and is highly confusing considering secularism and religious law(s) don't mix and are a kind of oxymoron (mutually exclusive). As a result, sometimes when there are problems and controversies involving and due to the religious laws, the politicians and people conveniently tend to blame the secularism in the country while saying nothing about religious laws.  

(3) Similarly, rather than putting the limits on families in having number of children (preferably two children per couple) to curtail the rapidly increasing population which could lead to better management, distribution and use of India's limited services and resources (schools, jobs, land, water, energy, etc.), Govt. did nothing proactively. The excuse given for Govt. inaction was that, paraphrasing it, "putting limits on family size would be unacceptable to religious minority Christians and Muslims in India and that the Pope might also not like it."

Anyway, without a good, effective, comprehensive and timely policy (two children per couple) from Govt. officially to check the population growth, people in all communities in India (including Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others) kept on having children freely, leading eventually to the population in India more than quadrupling since Independence (from 33 crore or 330 million in 1947 to 140 crore or 1.4 billion in 2021).