The government set
up a 10-memberCabinet Committee
on Employment and Skill Development on 5 June.
The committee is one of two Cabinet committees that are set up to rise theeconomic growth
and tackle unemployment.
Members
of the committee:
The Committee will be chaired by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The
committee includes:
Home Minister Amit Shah
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal
Agriculture Minister Narendra
Singh Tomar
Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal
‘Nishank’
Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra
Pradhan
Minister Skill and Entrepreneurship Mahendra Nath
Pandey
Ministers of State Santosh Kumar
Gangwar (Labour)
Ministers of State Hardeep Singh
Puri (Housing and Urban Affairs
Reason for the formation of the committee:
The committee was set up because the Employment
data for 2017-18 which was released on May 31 after the Lok Sabha elections
reported that the country’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.1% in the
period. This is the highest in 45 years.
Fall in Gross Domestic Product (GDP):
It is expected that the committee on economic
growth will prepare a road map to bring the economy back on
the growth trajectory as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
fell to 5.8%
in the last quarter of 2018-19. It is the lowest since
2014. The GDP growth for 2018-19 was 6.8%, against the target of 7.2%.
The fall in growth is the result of the dip in
the performance of the core sectors of the economy, as the eight core sectors
recorded a growth of just 2.6 % in April, compared with 4.6% in the same month
in 2018. According to the government’s data, the country’s economic growth
saw the third straight fall in January-March quarter in 2019.
Note:
The eight core sectors are coal, crude oil,
natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement, and electricity.
