Bharat Nirman Ads - Bogus Claims Of Jobs And Growth

It has been almost 9 months since India's tax payers money is misused to a wide extent to bombard Indians that a massive "Bharat Nirman" (India building) is happening. Every print or visual advertisement will surely have Sonia Gandhi (no one is sure what is her active and constitutionally sanctioned role in the government) and PM Manmohan Singh. More or less all these ads are hypes and I have spent time debunking many of them earlier.

Over 100 crores are clearly burnt in various Bharat Nirman ads. The one ad that always catches my attention is the Jobs related ad. The "revolution" in job creation as claimed via MNREGA has burnt crores of valuable tax money, in just the print and digital ads.

Bharat Nirman ad on jobs - source: vifindia

Keep in mind, there are three kinds of major jobs in India.

1. The regular jobs - salaried either in government or in private sector.
2. The casual jobs - like the one being advertised. These are seasonal either in private or public sectors.
3. The self employment jobs - Majority of Indians make their living in self employment or casual jobs.

"Earlier we used to search for work.. now jobs come to us" claims the young man, in that UPA ad.

Are you really sure Mrs. Sonia Gandhi?
Have you really created the crores of jobs that you claim using our tax money?

Let's explore.

Devinder Sharma, an expert in food and agriculture policy, has written a very important, fact filled article in DNA on 17th February 2014. The title of the article is Migration back to villages. If we don't understand the plight of the 60,00,00,000 farmers in India who are actively into agriculture, we just can't comment on the economy in any sensible manner. This article paints the most current picture of Indian agriculture. It not only exposes the jobs creation myth of UPA, and also exposes the hollowness of their claims on food security and land acquisition bills.

Some key excerpts from that tell us an entirely different picture.


Farmers are leaving the cities and moving back to the villages. Why? The economy has tanked in urban areas.

In the coming months, about 1.5 crore farmers who quit agriculture in the past seven years, are likely to trudge back into the villages. In normal circumstances such a massive reverse migration — from the cities back to the villages — would have been a sign of inclusive growth. But economists are taking this U-turn as a sign of economic slowdown.

When UPA talked of employment generation, it did not tell that 50,00,000 farmers of India left their farming jobs each year, to take up menial and highly unstable jobs. Who calculated these lost jobs?

In the seven-year period between 2005 and 2012, according to CRISIL an estimated 3.7 crore farmers quit agriculture. Economists view this trend as a sign of economic growth. In other words, while 50 lakh farmers are forced out of agriculture every year, growing farm unemployment is being considered as a sign of economic growth. How can pushing farmers out of agriculture sector and then finding an alternative employment for these millions displaced from agriculture constitute economic growth?

India saw mostly temporary and casual jobs that were counted as "Bharat Nirman". Here's the reality.

we are told that an estimated 70 lakh jobs are created in the non-farm sector. Considering that most of the non-farm jobs are in construction, what is not being told is that these menial jobs are temporary and do not carry any social security.

Except agriculture, everything else is collapsing during "Bharat Nirman" phase of Manmohan Singh.

At a time when there is an all round doom and gloom — industrial output failing to keep pace, manufacturing sector declining, joblessness growing, fiscal deficit mounting and the current account deficit growing to a worrisome level — it is only agriculture that provides a glimmer of hope.  

Here is a very worrying part. India emerged as the biggest exporter of rice during the years immediately after NDA government. But the so-called Bharat Nirman is almost making India an importer of rice in 3 years.

India emerged as the world’s biggest exporter of rice, and farm exports zoomed exponentially. And yet the fact remains that agriculture is the most neglected sector. Even the Prime Minister acknowledges that India is faced with terrible agrarian distress.

Already there are indications that India will turn into an importer of rice in the next three years.

UPA government is killing even the only sector that has some decent future, the agriculture.

In fact, at a time when government employees have been promised a further pay rise from the 7th Pay Commission, farmers remain at the bottom of the pile, neglected and forgotten. On an average, 2,500 farmers quit farming every day to join the army of landless workers.

UPA is not reducing the poverty, but infact making it worse. All the "garibi hatao" slogans are just eye washes, by reducing the scale with which poverty is measured.

With joblessness growing and the policy thrust on reducing subsidies for the poor and needy, the number of poor in absolute terms has been increasing. By reducing the poverty line to Rs28 in urban areas, and Rs24 in rural areas, the government can play around with figures, but the fact remains that poverty is on an upswing.

 UPA government burns public money to claim that the National Food Security Bill (FSB) is a great thing.

Food Security Bill ad - source: castingnb

But the reality exposed by Devinder Sharma is that UPA's failed policies have deliberately displaced farmers and now this FSB is just to reduce the chances of food riots when people have neither jobs nor food.

The enactment of the Food Security Act ensuring a monthly entitlement of 5 kg of rice/wheat/millet  to 67 per cent of the population or 830 million people is not only aimed at offsetting the additional burden of the unprecedented price rise, but more importantly, it is aimed at minimising the possibility of food riots that can erupt when a large section of the population is being deliberately displaced from an assured livelihood.

UPA 2 has killed India's economy. Proof.

From a high of 9.3 per cent two years ago, the GDP has fallen to less than 5 per cent in 2013.  

As opposed to UPA's Bharat Nirman claim, jobs are disappearing in India.  All the growth we saw on paper was jobless growth in totality. This is not going to help India that has 18% of the world's population.

At a time when GDP was galloping at 8-9 per cent between 2005 and 2010, the report shows 140 lakh people were displaced from agriculture. Generally it is believed that those who quit agriculture would be joining the workforce in the manufacturing sector. But the report showed that even in the manufacturing sector 57 lakh jobs were lost. A clear pointer to the jobless growth the country is witnessing.

 And lastly,  Rahul Gandhi keeps harping about the Land Acquisition bill as a great achievement of UPA government, even though he has no official role in the government (meaning, will take credit for all positive thigns, but escapes all blame for negative things like scams).

But Devinder exposes the hollowness of Rahul Gandhi's claim:

With the new land acquisition law coming into force, more people would be driven out of their meagre land holdings and forced to migrate to the cities looking for menial jobs.

Wake up India.. It's not Bharat Nirman. It's Bharat Nirnaam (ruin) that UPA government is doing.
India needs a leader with a growth track record. Not tape records. Think and vote in 2014.