Are people working in khadi industries leaving their jobs in droves? The official figures seem to suggest so. Data recently provided by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises to the Lok Sabha shows that the number of people employed in the khadi sector fell from 11.6 lakh to 4.6 lakh between 2015-16 and 2016-17.

A closer look suggests that at least some of this may be just records getting cleaned up. But how much is due to this factor and how many jobs have been lost to modernisation is not clear.

Interestingly, the years during which the jobs plummeted — 2015-16 to 2016-17 — the production of khadi increased by 31.6% and sales grew 33%. According to the Khadi and Village Industries Commission ( KVIC ), the employment numbers till 2015-16 did not reflect the true picture because while new job creations were being added, the figures on people leaving the sector were not being updated.

KVIC: New model charkhas too made khadi artisans lose job

The KVIC also accepts that introduction of new model charkhas to replace the traditional single spindle ones could be the cause of some job loss.

“Most spinners were working on single spindle traditional charkhas earlier which are more employment intensive. With the adoption of new model charkhas many old artisans have exited,” states the commission’s annual report. However, neither the ministry nor the commission have spelt out how much of the drop in jobs is due to this factor.

A major chunk, 3.2 lakh out of the drop of 6.8 lakh jobs, was in the central zone comprising Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Nearly 1.2 lakh jobs were lost in the east zone that includes Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Andaman and Nicobar.

Employment generation under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) also appears to be on the decline in 2017-18. According to the data given to the Lok Sabha, about 3.2 lakh people were employed under the programme in 2015-16, which rose to 4.1 lakh in 2016-17.

However, in the first ten months of 2017-18, only 2.5 lakh people were added. The number of projects assisted under PMEGP also seem to be declining with 31,000-odd in April-January of the current financial year against nearly 53,000 in 2016-17. PMEGP is a credit linked subsidy scheme, for setting up new micro-enterprises and generate employment opportunities in rural and urban areas.

A clarification

Responding to this story, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has said the author did not consult any authorised KVIC officials and quoted "so-called KVIC sources" without mentioning their names.

It said earlier the entire payment of subsidy for producing khadi was being given by the KVIC to Khadi institutions, but it then received serious complaints that the subsidy was not reaching the artisans. KVIC also received complaints that the khadi institutions were claiming the subsidy on inflated numbers of artisans, including artisans who had left the sector in the last 20 years due to old age, death, sickness, marriage, migration and so on.

It said KVIC decided in January 2016 to pay the subsidy directly to artisans in their Aadhaar-seeded accounts. This resulted in flushing out ‘ghost’ artisans. "Hence, in our clean-up operation, imaginary number of artisans has been brought to the real numbers which resulted in no loss of job in khadi sector," a letter from the KVIC chairman said.

The letter also gave details of the number of modern charkhas and looms given to artisans and how this had helped boost productivity. Referring to employment under the PMEGP programme, the KVIC claimed that the story’s suggestion that job creation under this scheme in 2017-18 may be on the decline compared to the previous year was incorrect. "During the current year 2017-18 ,the achievements against the number of persons to be employed stands 64% till Jan 2018 and within the rest of 2 months the achievement is expected more than 100%," the letter stated.

Our response:

All the figures mentioned in the story are from the KVIC itself and from the reply given by its parent ministry to Parliament. Nothing is attributed to sources and all of the quotes are from the KVIC's own annual report. The ministry's response to Parliament had given the employment data without any explanation for the apparently drastic fall. Our correspondent took the trouble of culling out from KVIC publications what accounted for this and the story makes it clear that the decline may not represent an actual loss of jobs. Again, it is the KVIC's annual report that makes the statement that the older model single spindle charkhas generated more employment. Finally, as far as the PMEGP is concerned, the story pointed out that 2.5 lakh over ten months is less than 4.1 lakh over a full year. KVIC's rejoinder does not question a single fact we have reported.

