Former chief of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Raghuram Rajan said there isn’t enough focus on joblessness and that there was a hunger for good jobs in the country. Rajan was speaking to NDTV about his new book ‘The Third Pillar’.
“There is a huge hunger for good jobs. Our job statistics have been poor for a long time,” he said.
“Today even if you have a high-school degree you don't get a job. We have great jobs for people leaving premier institutions like IIMs, etc, but that is not the case for a majority of students leaving schools and colleges which are not of that level of repute,” he added.
He further said that 25 million people applying for 90,000 jobs in Railways show the hunger for good jobs in the country.
Commenting on the lack of jobs, Rajan said that there is a need for credible data on the issue.
"Given that kind of anxiety, it is important, just to convey to the world, that we are not manipulating anything... this is our data, to actually have an independent group look into it and certify that our data indeed is fine or suggest the changes needed," he said.
"We need to improve collection of those statistics (on jobs). We can't rely on the EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation) or other make-do versions. We need to collect better job data," Rajan said.
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