New Delhi : Opposing the critique that demonetization caused job loss, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday that only those who were not able to advance their skills with time lost their jobs in the aftereffect of the note ban, reports Times of India.
Prasad said that jobs and employment were different. Although people with lower skill levels lost jobs, according to the minister, the government’s drive towards creating a digital India with a focus on digital payments, has resulted in job creation and new job roles.
“Under the Mudra scheme, we gave loans worth Rs 4 lakh crore to 8 crore people,” Prasad said. The borrowers included small traders, persons from minority communities including scheduled castes and scheduled tribes; if each of the borrowers had employed at least one person, “4 crore jobs were created automatically,” the IT minister was quoted as saying by TOI.
Information Technology industry-body NASSCOM had earlier said that employees would have to “reskill or perish” in the IT sector as newer technologies come up every day. Although the body has refuted reports of a laying off trend in the industry owing to automation and cost-cutting measures.
The IT industry will add a net of 1.5 lakh employees this fiscal, NASSCOM said.
Prasad said that according to NASSCOM, around 6 lakh jobs were created during BJP’s tenure at the Centre. He also cited a former executive of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) saying 2 lakh people were employed in the last two years.
In July this year, among reports of job loss, Prasad claimed that 20-25 lakh additional IT jobs would be created over the next four to five years and the growth of country’s digital economy would add to it.
While predicting that India would witness the largest unemployment in the middle level to senior level, Capgemini India’s Chief Executive Srinivas Kandula had earlier said that about two-thirds of India’s IT employees could not be retrained.
Six of the largest IT companies had a net reduction of their staff strength by 4,157 people in between March and September this year. These companies, comprising TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, and Cognizant, have reduced their workforce for the two consecutive quarters of this fiscal, the Mint reported.
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