Lost

1. The economy grew 8% per year in 2004-14, despite a global economic crisis in 2008, whose effects continued. Population was growing 1.3% pa, so PCI grew 6.7% ...

The open unemployment rate of the educated was falling after 2004-5 to 2011-12(based on the NSO’s labour force surveys for those years). Just as the numbers of educated youth grew in rural/urban India over 2004-2019, and then further during the economic and health mismanagement during Covid, unemployment grew. That is why poverty numbers have increased, as the World Bank in an official report pointed out (Sept 2022): during 2020, poverty (defined as those living on less than $2.15 per person per day) increased by 70 million. Not only was GDP growth the fastest ever, but there was, again for the first time ever, an absolute fall in the numbers of the poor by nearly 20 mn per year over 2004-5 to 2011-12 (by the Tendulkar poverty line) ― an achievement of staggering (Chinese) proportions. Open unemployment has risen sharply from 2.2% in 2012 to 6.1% in 2017-18 (NSSO data), the highest in 45 years. In 2017-18, the Periodic Labour Force Survey found that unemployment was at a 45 year high. The record on real wages (after adjusting for inflation) is far superior to the recent period. While their share of population had been falling until 2004, never before had the absolute number of poor fallen since 1973-4(except marginally between 1993-4 and 2004-5 by barely 18 million by the Lakdawala poverty line). During 2004-5 and 2011-12, the economy was creating 7.5 million new non-agri jobs every year (52 million new jobs over seven years). For the first time in India’s history, the absolute numbers in agriculture fell after 2004-5 (fast until 2014, slower since then till 2019). The share of workers in agriculture had been falling since 1973-4, but the absolute numbers had always been increasing. As a ratchet effect, urban wages also rose in real terms (despite rising inflation).