The Congress on Friday called out Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks that the Mudra Yojana, facilitating micro loans, had acted as a boost to employment, terming the remarks a “lie”.
Addressing a press conference, former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh said Mr. Modi would be the first Prime Minister in India who had a done a surgical strike on jobs and would be known as a ‘job destroyer’.
The former Minister cited a reply of the Finance Ministry to a question in Parliament to say that there was no data on jobs created through Mudra loans.
Mr. Ramesh went on to cite data by the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy to claim that in 2018, one crore jobs were destroyed because of demonetisation and hasty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
“On August 10, 2018, a question was asked about the number of jobs created through the Mudra scheme. The Finance Ministry replied that ‘data on jobs generated under Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana is not maintained centrally’. This is the official reply but Mr Modi claims crores of jobs were created,” said Mr. Ramesh.
While speaking to a private TV channel, Mr. Modi had claimed that four crore people had taken Mudra loans and they, in turn, had provided employment.
“The Prime Minister says there has been a revolution in creating jobs through Mudra. I haven’t heard a bigger lie than this,” alleged Mr Ramesh
“In 2017-18, close to 90% of the loans had an average size of ₹24,840. This is completely inadequate for even one job, let alone two to five as claimed by the Prime Minister,” he said.
“You do different kinds of surgical strikes, at the border, in space, anytime, that is different. But the reality of unemployment that is there on the ground, you did not do a surgical strike on that. However, you did a surgical strike on employment in 2018,” said the Congress leader.
“Demonetisation was a surgical strike, hasty implementation of GST was also a surgical strike. One crore people were affected by this surgical strike,” he said.
