Modi govt generated plenty of jobs in last 3 years, says Tomar

Flagship programmes of the Rural Development Ministry such as rural employment guarantee scheme, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojna, etc have turned out to be major job provider in the country in the past three years of NDA government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, different rural schemes had generated 813 crore person days of job in the past three years (one person working for a day makes one person day).

"Under the rural housing scheme, the ministry has generated 99 crore person days of job in the last three years, while 636.78 crore person days were generated under rural job scheme and about 78 crore person days of job generated under rural road plan," Tomar said.

Apart from this, under Deen Dayal Upadhyay-Grameen Kaushal Yojana (DDY-GKY), 86,120 candidates were trained in the year 2014-15 and 54,196 got jobs. Similarly, in 2015-16, about 1.35 lakh candidates were placed after the skill training, while in 2016-17, the number of candidates getting placement is 84,900," the minister said.

Generating employment opportunities for people in rural areas is considered important for the Modi government, which was elected in 2014 on a development and employment-generation platform. A statement from the rural development ministry said expenditure on rural development has steadily risen in the past years from Rs 58,630 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 95,099 crore in 2016-17. "For the year 2017-18, the ministry of rural development targets an expenditure of Rs 105,448 crore," the minister said.

"In 2016-17, the rural job scheme had provided employment to 5.04 crore households, creating more than 235 crore person days of employment. Out of the total employment generated, 56 per cent had been generated for women which is the highest participation of women since the inception of the programme", MoS Rural Development Ram Kripal Yadav said, adding that more than 52 lakh projects had been implemented in the same time period.