Amit Mitra: Centre failed to address unemployment issue

Kolkata: Reacting to the Union Budget, Amit Mitra, former finance minister of Bengal and now principal financial adviser to the Chief Minister, has called the Union government’s employment generating scheme “absurd”, alleging it will fail to address the unemployment issue in the country.

On Saturday, Mitra told the media that the Centre has again failed to address the issue of unemployment and alleged that the Budget has cheated people of the country. He contended that the Union government has shifted the responsibility of providing jobs to the private sector.

He said it would be absurd to imagine that top 500 companies would be able to take two million interns. “Each company would have to then take 4,000 interns every year. The companies too have called it absurd,” Mitra said.

He likened the employment generation scheme to that of the Agniveer scheme for the armed forces and remarked that the Union does not mention as to what will happen to the interns in the second year since the scheme is for 12 months, that too voluntary.

Mitra alleged that the income of people has drastically reduced under the Narendra Modi government. “For regular workers, average monthly income went down from Rs 12,100 in 2012 to Rs 10,900 in 2022. For the

self-employed, monthly income fell from Rs 7,017 to Rs 6,840, during the same time,” he claimed.

He claimed that the Union ought to have amended a lot of the proposals but did not. “The Budget has completely failed to address the problems of the economy and common people,” Mitra remarked.

On the recent change in long term capital gain tax and indexation benefits, he said that the Union finance minister said whatever the government is doing is to ensure a simplified tax regime. “Why did it then do a turnaround within 72 hours or within a week?”

he questioned.