India's Rising Unemployment: Will Budget 2018 Revive Jobs?

India's pre-budget economic report, the annual Economic Survey has predicted that India would have the fastest growing major economy in the coming fiscal, but it has also flagged job creation as a pressing concern and hints that this will be a key focus of Budget 2018. New data derived from Employees' Provident Fund Organisation accounts suggests that contrary to the jobless-growth narrative, at least seven million jobs were created annually. But this flies in the face of other reports, like a CMIE report that says 1.5 million jobs were lost in the quarter right after demonetisation and another 0.4 million in May-June 2017. The government's own figures put out by the Labour Bureau in its Quarterly Employment Survey also paint a somewhat dismal picture.