Dr Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of SJM, says he has met Kumar and has informally conveyed the points.
After criticising and running down several key decisions of Niti Aayog under former vice chairman Arvind Panagariya, RSS-affiliated economic wing Swadeshi Jagran Manch has put forth two suggestions to its new head Rajiv Kumar.
First, is to find ways to implement the 2002 Dr SP Gupta special group report on targeting employment opportunities per year, and the second is to give out employment subsidies to small-scale cottage industries, instead of the corporate.
Dr Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of SJM, says he has met Kumar and has informally conveyed the points.
Reiterating that he had a problem with the "one size fits all" approach adopted by Niti Aayog after it replaced the erstwhile Planning Commission, the SJM head said he has conveyed to Kumar that the Dr SP Gupta group report will help guide the Aayog in framing policies on employment, given that it is one of its current focus areas.
Currently, Kumar is heading a task force constituted by Niti Aayog to propose a plan of action to generate employment, tackle the problem of underemployment in goods and services sector by boosting the country's exports. The task force is slated to submit its report by November.
"Dr SP Gupta group report gathered dust during the entire UPA regime. It calculates job creation in different sectors, and talks about the promotion of cottage industries and food processing units in rural areas for creating jobs," Mahajan told DNA.
In 1999, the Planning Commission had constituted a task force under the then member Montek Singh Ahluwalia on generating 10 crore employment opportunities over a period of 10 years, which had submitted its report in 2001.
The report, however, underestimated the problem of an underemployment backlog and hence a separate "Special Group on Targeting Ten Million Employment Opportunities per Year" was created under then Planning Commission member Dr SP Gupta.
The report had pushed for the growth of the unorganised sector and had also estimated a growth of 12 per cent for the Tenth Plan on the ground that economy would grow at 8 per cent (GDP) in the Tenth Plan. Besides calculating employment generation figures across sectors, it had stated that the small-scale sector would be the engine of employment generation in the next five years, on the estimation that there were 33 lakh SSI units in the country then.
In July, a separate Niti Aayog task force on improving employment data had put forth a definition of "formal workers", among recommending other steps.
Mahajan also suggested to Kumar that Niti Aayog should ensure tax subsidies to corporate to be brought down and instead employment subsidies should be given to small-scale industries, which in turn will help create more employment.
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