Repeated RTIs have revealed that
Labour Bureau’s report on employment-unemployment data is supposedly
ready and was to be released in 2018. Why then is the Govt. continuing its
deafening silence on the matter?
On January 31, Business Standard reported on the
National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) unemployment data – which the government
has not released. The figures quoted are highly unflattering. The country’s
unemployment rate has risen to 6.1%, making it the worst in the last 45 years.
What is more is that these numbers
are on the conservative side, given that no data on unemployment has even been
collected since demonetisation. The alarming unemployment levels potentially
explain the futility of our various attempts – outlined below – at obtaining
data and information about its release through RTIs.
On January 28, the only two
non-governmental members of India’s National Statistical Commission (NSC)
resigned. Among the reasons for their departure was the
government’s delay in releasing the results of the new employment survey data,
despite being approved by the NSC. This is another development in our quest to
procure the missing labour data.
Who collects jobs
data?
Labour market data was typically
collected by the NSSO’s Employment-Unemployment Surveys (EUS) conducted once
every five years. Employment and unemployment rates, women’s labour-force
participation and other labour market indicators generated from these surveys
are critical inputs for policy formulation.
The most recent round of employment
survey should have occurred in 2016-17, as per the five-year schedule. The
survey, however, was postponed for unclear reasons. The lack of any information
in the public domain on the NSSO survey prompted us to a file an RTI in May 2018 enquiring the status of these
figures.
In June, the labour ministry responded saying that the 2017-18 NSSO EUS had been
discontinued. In response to a question on the reasons for discontinuing the
survey, the ministry responded that:
“(C)onsidering the need of labour force statistics at
regular and more frequent intervals, a new regular employment-unemployment
survey namely, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been launched by …
(NSSO) … across India in April 2017”.
The ministry’s response further
claimed that PLFS data would be available by December 2018. However, the data
is yet to be released.
In another development, to make some
data available annually, the labour ministry entrusted the Labour Bureau (LB)
with the task of collecting annual employment-unemployment data from 2010
onwards. There have been five such surveys. Since the discontinuation of the NSSO’s
EUS from 2011-12 – and in the absence of PLFS data – these surveys are the only
recent official labour data. The latest such survey was conducted between April
and December 2015.
The LB surveys have, unfortunately,
neither been regular nor available. In 2014-15, these surveys did not take
place for reasons unknown. And the overall process of dissemination of the LB
survey data is ambiguous. Typically, the NSSO’s EUS reports are available in
the public domain and the unit-level data can be acquired freely.
The LB reports prior to the 2015-16
survey are not available on the ministry website nor on any other government
website, to our knowledge (they may be found at the Centre for Sustainable Employment website. Neither have the
unit-level data relating to any of the LB surveys been made easily available to
the public.
Till mid-2018, there was no
information on the next annual survey (2016-17) of the LB. The vacuum in
official labour data was apparent and perhaps, sensing the discontent, and in
an attempt to address these concerns, the labour ministry issued a press release dated June 11, 2018. It stated that the
“field work of Sixth Annual Employment Unemployment Survey (2016-17) has been
completed and data entry validation work is in progress. The report pertaining
to 6th Annual EUS is to be completed by September, 2018”.
On the basis of the press release,
in October 2018, we filed a second RTI requesting the expected date of
release of the LB’s 6th EUS report and unit-level data. In response to this
RTI, the ministry stated that the report was being finalised
and was “likely to be released shortly”, with no mention of the expected date
of release. Subsequently, we filed a third RTI to obtain the details of the expert
committee and minutes of the meeting.
The ministry then responded saying that the expert group meeting on
6th LB EUS under the chairmanship of professor S.P. Mukherjee held on September
27, 2018, had, “approved the … report with minor additions/deletions…”. The committee
recommended that subsequent to the labour ministry’s approval, the executive
summary would be released.
However, to this day, the LB data
and reports remain elusive. The only indication that the report is perhaps
ready has come in the form of an article in Business Standard dated January
11, citing numbers from the 6th LB EUS. The data and the report are supposedly
ready and the RTI response claimed that it would be released in 2018. Why then
is the government continuing its deafening silence on this matter?
Caste-wise data
Besides the lack of availability,
there is much else to be questioned regarding the content of the LB survey.
Particularly, a question on the religion of the household, which has been asked
in all NSSO EUS, has been omitted in the LB surveys. Specifically with regard
to the 6th EUS, in the Expert Committee meeting – as was revealed in the
response to our RTI – a decision was made to exclude caste-wise information
on an individual’s work status and educational qualification.
Instead, it was recommended that
only the “overall” status be shown in the report. As the recent State of Working India report 2018 finds, caste
disparities in earnings and occupations continue to pervade the Indian labour
market.
Reliable labour data and reports are
absolutely critical for active citizenry. The ministry’s decision to withhold
caste-wise data from the recent (unreleased) EUS survey is unclear. A question
in the RTI on the criteria used to select members of this ‘Expert Committee’
remained unanswered. Lack of proactive transparency in such important decisions
is not only suspicious but also regressive for a democracy.
Given the rapid changes in the
Indian labour market, there is an urgent need to have current, accurate and
publicly available data through regular, dynamic and comprehensive surveys.
Indeed, this was the intention behind constituting the NITI Aayog Task Force on
Improving Employment Data. The attempts by the government to “improve” labour
data have actually made it worse.
The nationally representative and
comprehensive EU surveys have been discontinued. These have been replaced by a
less than comprehensive LB surveys, which also remain inaccessible to the
public. Finally, the status of the PLFS is unknown. Moreover, any other
official data has been limited in coverage (Employees’ Provident Fund
Organisation, Quarterly Employment Surveys) and alternative data sources such
as the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy have been disparaged by officials
leaving the public in an artificially created vacuum of labour data.
The most recent resignation of
members of the NSC is yet another testament to the frustration about the
Centre’s opacity on releasing employment data.
Courtesy:Rosa Abraham,
Janaki Shibu and Rajendran Narayanan work at Azim Premji University
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