Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event in Houston, the Congress on Thursday accused the BJP government of ruining “access to education and employment opportunities”.
At a press conference, Congress communication chief Randeep Singh Surjewala said, “Indian youth have a straight question — howdy education and howdy unemployment? The BJP government has ruined education and employment in India.”
Mr. Surjewala said two reports — the Eighth Annual All India Survey on Higher Education 2018-19 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) and a report by the Centre for Monitoring India Economy (CMIE) on unemployment in India — put the unemployment rate at 8.19% in August, the highest in over 50 years, and very poor statistics on higher studies.
He said a shocking fact was that the more a person was literate, higher were the chances of being unemployed. While the rate of unemployment for men was 6.1%, for women it was 17.5%.
“The global average unemployment is 4.95%, as estimated by the International Labour Organisation, but the unemployment in India is nearly double,” he said.
Criticising the report of the HRD Ministry on the state of higher education, Mr. Surjewala said only 2.5% educational institutions provided for PhD studies and only 0.5% youths were enrolled.
According to the report, about 74% of youth in the 18-23 age group were not enrolled for graduate degrees, he said.
“Time for Prime Minister to go back from event management and stage managed Howdy programme to addressing Howdy education and Howdy unemployment,” said Mr. Surjewala.
