In his fourth Independence Day speech on August 15, 2017 as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi said: “Over the past three years, Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana has led to millions and millions of youth becoming self-dependent. It’s not just that, one youth is providing employment to one, two or three more people.”

Similar views were expressed by Amit Shah, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in May 2017, when he said: “We have tried to give new perspective to employment as it is not possible to provide employment to everyone in a country of 125 crore people. We are promoting self-employment and the government has made eight crore people self-employed.”

These remarks emerge out of the assumption that each loan given under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY, and more popularly referred to as a Mudra Loan), leads to the creation of at least one self-employment opportunity. Is that correct? Let’s take a look at Table 1.