Raghuram Rajan raises doubts over government’s claim of 7% GDP growth without jobs 

Raghuram Rajan.

Raghuram Rajan, former Reserve Bank of India governor, on Tuesday, raised doubts about the country’s economy clocking 7 per cent growth at a time when there are not enough jobs created and called for an impartial body to look into the numbers to restore confidence.

In an interview with journalist Barkha Dutt in her “Democracy Live” programme, Rajan said, “I know one minister (in the Modi government) has said (that) how can we be growing at 7 per cent and not have jobs. Well, one possibility is that we are not growing at 7 per cent.”

He then added, “I just think that we need now to essentially clean up, find out what in fact is the source of confusion with the new GDP numbers, with the revisions etc. I would say setting up an impartial body to look at it is an important step to resorting confidence.”

The former RBI governor also said that India had good track record with credible data and that we need to get a panel of independent experts to go through that. 

In January, a leaked NSSO report, which was the government allegedly suppressed, showed that employment hit a 45-year high in the country after the Novermber 2016 demonetization. Also, an IMF economist, John Bluedorn, said youth inactivity currently was the highest in India. 

The full Raghuram Rajan interview with Barkha Dutt:

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