What do they mean by ' jobs '?

Election manifestos are out, promising the sun, the moon and stardust. The Congress was first off the mark, promising to to train and provide jobs to 100 million youth, a 10% growth in manufacturing and to bring two-thirds of the population into the middle class through welfare means. The BJP released its manifesto this morning, on the first day of the elections. It also promises jobs but not Foreign Direct Investment in multi-brand retail. With 60% of the population under the age of 27 years job creation is vital. Between 2000 and 2012 jobs grew by just 2% per year. Most of these jobs were casual labor in the construction industry or low paid work in hotels, road side vending or as servants in households. The National Sample Survey Organisation reports unemployment rate at between 3 and 5% at 11 to 25 million but in 2010 the World Bank found that 69% were earning less than Rs 37 per day. The most shocking figures are for those earning regular wages. A respectable 62.9% in Delhi are earning regular wages but that maybe because of vast numbers of government employees, most of whom are unproductive and at the root of extreme corruption in the country. After that the numbers of gainfully employed falls off pretty sharply with Punjab at 27.5%, UP and Odisha at 10.6%, Chhattisgarh at 9.7% and Bihar at a dismal 5.8%. For India as a whole 17.9% get regular wages, 29.9% are casual labor while 52.2% are self-employed. Road side chaiwallah, coolies at railway stations and the raddiwallah on his bicycle are probably counted as self-employed and MGNREGA which pays the rural poor for 100 days a year for doing nothing is also counted as employment. To create genuine jobs which are productive, provide job satisfaction and pay a living wage it is critical to create world class infrastructure, which means electricity and roads, as China has done. Sadly electricity has become very expensive because we are having to import coal when India has over 250 billion tonnes of coal and companies building roads are making huge losses because they paid a premium to be awarded contracts. The recent Land Acquisition Act will make it even harder to get land for building roads. Labor laws in India are so restrictive that manufacturers shy away from employing full time workers and depend instead on contract workers. Unless labor laws are completely changed enough good jobs cannot be created and there will be unrest as in Venezuela. Politicians should not be allowed to go abroad on taxpayer money unless they say what they have learnt and how they will implement it. Time to get tough.