Presented with the 2008-09 Budget, the document finds that employment generation has not kept pace with investment in the organised sector, leaving many educated youth without suitable employment.

While the total employment in the organised sector was 16.9 lakh in 2000, it stood at 18.04 lakh in December 2007. Industry-wise, employment stagnated in agriculture, mining, electricity and gas, while it actually went down in construction, communication and transport, managing a marginal increase in the manufacturing, retail, and finance and insurance sectors.

The document goes on to say the government is expecting the new investment pipeline to translate into 24 lakh new jobs — a 33 per cent increase over the existing figure of 18 lakhs.

With Chief Minister Narendra Modi even fond of claiming that it would translate into 40 lakh jobs, what the Industry department mandarins are targeting is a whopping 1,200 per cent increase in the rate of employment generation seen in the last seven years!

The paper concludes: “Thus, it is clear that the expansion in employment in the last decade had shown a declining trend on account of the capital intensive investments taking place in industrial sectors like chemicals, petrochemicals, and refineries.”

To reverse the trend, the prescription given is a reorientation of the present education system, and a focus on knowledge-based labour intensive industries.

The service sector, which has a very high employment potential, needs to be promoted. The paper does mention the government's efforts in skill formation and multi-skilling, but in the plan for commencing fiscal, it limits its recommendations to the ones that have yielded the present situation – a heavy focus on investments leading to job creation: Industrial development, state and Centrally sponsored schemes for employment generation.

Under the heading 'The Educated Unemployed', the programme raises concern over the increase in their numbers. Quoting employment exchange figures, it says the number of educated unemployed persons not having vocational skills has been rising from 5.88 lakh in 1990 to 7.99 lakh in 2007.