Goa budget to focus on job creation: CM Parsekar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India philosophy and job creation will find ample resonance in Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar's first budget that he will present in the state assembly on March 25.

Parsekar said that the budget's main focus would be on employment and would look to feed off Modi's flagship and high-profile manufacture-oriented campaign. "The focus of the budget will be on job creation," Parsekar told IANS.

"Of course, the prime minister's Make in India campaign has been our inspiration," the chief minister of the BJP-led coalition government said, lauding the flagship campaign that aims at bolstering the manufacturing sector in India and creating jobs.

Job-creation had been one of the key promises the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government here has failed to deliver.

After coming to power in 2012, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar, through an investment policy, had promised to create 50,000 jobs and attract investments of Rs. 25,000 crore ($4 billion) by 2017. Three years later, Parrikar was elevated by the BJP as the country's defence minister and now Parsekar, the man who replaced him, suggests the promise was a pipe dream.

"We are working towards creating jobs but 50,000 jobs by 2017 as promised by Parrikar is not possible in reality. Now there is limited time left. But we assure to fulfil this promise once we are returned to power again for five years in 2017," Parsekar had recently told IANS.

Industries Minister Mahadev Naik also maintained that it was impossible to deliver on the promise.

On the other hand, Goa, a state with a high literacy percentage, has been at the receiving end of the brain-drain phenomenon, where educated youngsters are forced to leave their home-state for better professional pastures - a problem acknowledged by Parsekar himself, who also used an anecdote to put it in perspective.

"I know a number of students who are IT (information technology) graduates who have left Goa. They are either settled in Hyderabad, Bengaluru or Pune because of the lack of slots here. One of them is getting a wife in the same profession. I am in Bengaluru, he says, and she is in Hyderabad. My parents are old now, they are in Goa," Parsekar said.

The chief minister also worried about the fact that Goa, which already has a low birthrate, may be left behind with only the old and aged - with all the able-bodied, productive and educated youth leaving the state for better jobs.

"If the situation continues, Goa will become a destination for old people, probably for old fathers, old uncles, old aunties, old grandfathers. I feel it is high time we all joined together and overcame the situation," Parsekar said.

The chief minister also implored unemployed youngsters to stop looking at the government as the only potential employer. With one bureaucrat for every 25 citizens Goa has one of the highest government official to citizen ratio in the country.

"The government is saturated, over-saturated. The youngsters will have to look elsewhere for jobs. That is why we are going to focus on skill development so that specific skills are developed for specific jobs," Parsekar said.

(Mayabhushan Nagvvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)