Missing the jobs for the data

The government has scrapped existing job surveys but has moved slowly on creating replacements

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has been combatting criticism of poor job creation with a counter-narrative that the country lacks proper employment statistics. 

But the conundrum is this: The existing exercises to collate official jobs statistics have been discontinued and replacement surveys are still to begin. The result: Whether Narendra Modi has fulfilled a 2014 campaign promise to create millions of jobs cannot be verified. 

The critics contend that, with official and private surveys indicating a sharp rise in unemployment, alternative methodologies are meant to counter an embarrassing narrative on jobs and open to interpretation.

In January last year, an exercise by two