JOBS

Job creation was a focal point of the BJP’s election campaign and criticism of its failure to create jobs has dogged it

Modi: "If we look at numbers for employment, more than 41 lakh formal jobs were created from September 2017 to April 2018 based on EPFO payroll data. According to a study based on EPFO data, more than 70 lakh jobs were created in the formal sector last year.

Now, you know that informal sector constitutes around 80% of all jobs. We also know that job creation in the formal sector can have a spinoff effect on job creation in the informal sector too.

In just one year, 48 lakh new enterprises got registered. Will this not result in more formalisation and better jobs?

More than 12 crore loans have been given under Mudra (micro loans). Is it unfair to expect that one loan would have created or supported means of livelihood for at least one person?

More than one crore houses have been constructed in the last one year; how much employment would this have generated? If road construction has more than doubled per month, if there is tremendous growth in railways, highways, airlines, etc, what does it indicate?"

THE FARM CRISIS

The roadmap to doubling farm income by 2022

Modi: "We are following a four-pronged strategy to achieve the goal of doubling farmers’ income: decrease the input costs, ensure proper prices for the produce, ensure minimal harvest and post-harvest losses, and create more avenues for income generation.

Not only will the farmers get minimum support price of 1.5 times their cost, they also have more avenues to get the right price with the help of e-NAM (the electronic National Agricultural Market, which provides price, production and market information to farmers)."

THE UPA LEGACY

For long the Modi government has blamed the UPA for every economic woe facing India. So why didn’t the government come out with a white paper on the state of the economy after assuming power in 2014?

Modi: "The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First).Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first."