 "Unemployed in MP? Govt will now refer to you as 'aspirational youth'")
Aryan Srivastava, who holds a graduate degree in agriculture, is jobless. But because he lives in Madhya Pradesh, he can no longer be called that; instead, the government has endowed him, and lakhs of others, with a new moniker: Aspirational youth.That is what the state government has decided to call jobseekers enrolled on its jobs portal, as part of its renaming and rebranding exercise, according to an NDTV report.
“There were no placements in my college. I thought my background in agriculture would provide me with opportunities, but there are fewer government vacancies. Even when there are openings, paper leaks ruin everything,” he told NDTV.
He is not alone. NDTV put the number of jobseekers in the state at an estimated 29.36 lakh, all of whom are struggling to find steady work as part of the ‘aspirational youth’ cohort.
Defending the new, even novel, nomenclature, MP Skill Development Minister Gautam Tetwal told NDTV, “The number of unemployed people registered in employment offices is different from the actual count. If a son works at his father’s shop and is registered in an employment office, he is not unemployed. A person earning less than Rs 12,646 per month without steady work can be considered unemployed, but that is not the situation in Madhya Pradesh.”
A look at the number of ‘aspirational youths’
In a written reply to the MP Assembly, Tetwal said that more than 26 lakh unemployed youths were registered on MP Rojgar Portal, a website for jobseekers in the state to enrol themselves to be matched with potential employers. However, the government has also admitted that it does not maintain data on the state’s literacy rate and the total number of unemployed youth, reported The Times of India.