Is unemployment highest in Kerala? Can official figures be considered the last word?

Official data can be obfuscating rather than revealing. To undermine any official data there will always be available credible alternate data figures, that too official.
The futile battle of such seemingly credible figures played out in the Assembly on Thursday. For the first time in this session, the Opposition UDF moved an adjournment motion on a relatively less contentious issue: Unemployment in Kerala.

It was Congress's Kundara MLA P C Vishnunath who moved the motion on the basis of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for the period between July 2023 and 2024. Quoting the report, Vishnunath said the unemployment among Kerala youth between the ages 15 and 29 was 29 per cent, the highest in the country. This, when the national average was 10.2 per cent.
Vishnunath said the unemployment rate among women was a staggering 47 pe rcent in Kerala. This was alarmingly higher than the national average of 11 per cent.

Finance minister K N Balagopal, who stood in for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who was still on voice rest, said the PLFS figures had no value. "It is about unemployment among youth between the ages of 15 and 29," he said. "Those between 15 and 22 are students in Kerala. Unlike in other places, they will not be out working. So the PLFS figures have no value, are pointless," the minister said.

He then called the Assembly's attention to another figure, this one picked from the 2023 report of the Union Public Service Commission. This says that 60 per cent of all public service commission recruitments in the country are done through Kerala PSC. "A state with just 3 per cent of the country's population does 60 per cent or one-third of the total recruitment in the country," Balagopal said. In 2023, he said 34,110 advises were issued by Kerala PSC in 2023.

Tamil Nadu, which stands second, had filled only 12,000 vacancies in 2023. "Even a state like Uttar Pradesh with a population of over 24 crore recruited just 4120 persons in the same period," the minister said, establishing the supremacy of Kerala in job creation using central government data.

The Opposition had a counter. "Other states have special recruitment boards for filling vacancies in crucial departments," Vishnunath said. "Tamil Nadu, for instance, has special recruitment boards for recruitment to the police and fire force, and many such institutions. In Kerala, recruitment to these agencies is done through the PSC. So to say Kerala tops recruitment by disguising the role played by special recruitment boards in other states is misleading," he said.

To the minister who was effusive about the state PSC's performance, Vishnunath had another poser. "If the PSC, as you say, is busy filling up vacancies, why has not a single person been appointed from the 13 rank lists for civil police officer (CPO) published six months ago," he said.

\There are 967 names in the women constable CPO list. "Not a single person has been recruited," Vishnunath said. He said the CPO list for sub-inspectors, the most crucial post for maintaining law and order, has 1,038 aspirants. "Not one person has been appointed," he said. "It is the shortage of personnel that has led to the suicide of 87 policemen in the last five years. The DGP has written to the government on the urgent need to strengthen the police force but the Finance Department has rejected the demand citing financial constraints," Vishnunath said.

"The government has money to conduct Keraleeyam, Nava Kerala Sadas, and rent helicopters. It can even spend Rs 100 crore to welcome the Argentinian football team. But it has no money to ease the burden of our highly-stressed police force," the MLA said.

The minister came up with official data that could potentially contradict the impression that Vishnunath sought to create. "This government has created 6000 new posts in the police force alone," Balagopal said. "Since 2016, we have created 30,000 new posts, the highest in the country," he added.

Opposition Leader V D Satheesan held up figures that exposed the other side of government recruitments. "There is backdoor appointments in all government departments," Satheesan said. In the IT Department, under the Chief Minister, he said 558 people were appointed on a contract basis. In the Social Justice Department, there were 874 backdoor contract appointments. In the Finance Department, 246 were appointed on a contract basis. "You have rendered the Employment Exchange useless. Why not shut it down," the Opposition Leader said.
As 'credible official figures' are used against each other, it becomes difficult to figure out reality.