Highlight projects' job potential in Cabinet notes, secretaries told

Job creation will be a top priority for all project clearances by the Union government, if the latest directive from the Cabinet Secretariat is executed in letter and spirit.

In an office memorandum issued by the Secretariat on Wednesday, all secretaries across ministries have been told to comply with the focus on job creation with immediate effect. "In view of the fact that employment generation in various sectors is vital for the country's socio-economic development, this aspect has to be an important criterion for any project/scheme appraisal," the circular says. "It has, therefore, been decided that henceforth all the notes for the Cabinet and its committees should separately and clearly reflect the employment generation potential of each proposal."

Secretaries have been asked to elaborate on employment generation potential of any project in the main body of the note in a separate paragraph. This must follow a paragraph devoted to "financial implications" in the draft Cabinet note as well as in the final Cabinet note. The current format of Cabinet note includes details on financial implications of projects. Projects above Rs 1,000 crore must be cleared by the Cabinet; earlier, the figure was Rs 300 crore.

Only last week did Prime Minister Narendra Modi roll out the action plan for Startup India, announcing several sops to encourage young entrepreneurs. Also, the government recently announced that there would be no interviews for non-gazetted government jobs.

Job creation and skill development have been a focus area for the Bharatiya Janata Party since the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

"We are the youngest country with 65 per cent of our population below 35 years of age… No country has such an opportunity as India to create jobs with human capital and abundant natural resource,'' Modi said recently.

According to data from Census 2011, around 10 million Indians with graduate, post-graduate and technical degrees did not have employment. That would mean 15 per cent of all Indians with degrees were looking for jobs as of 2011.

On the whole, India's unemployment rate rose to 9.6 per cent in 2011 from 6.8 per cent in 2001, according to Census data.