Even as the Narendra Modi government draws criticism over failure to create adequate employment opportunities, a senior government official put the onus of job creation on the private sector and also said that the problem was not lacking jobs, but lack of better-paying ones. The comment was made by Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog, at a session at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit on Friday. "The problem in India is not about jobs, but lack of better-paid jobs or aspirational jobs," the senior bureaucrat said in response to a question about the huge differences in various reports about job opportunities created in the country. He said that a McKinsey report had pegged the number of jobs created at 25-26 million in three years, while another report had estimated the number at 7-8 million annually. "The country cannot be growing at 7-8% annually, and not creating jobs. One cannot have 120 new mobile manufacturing units coming up without it. Engineers and doctors are being added every year," he said, implying that claims regarding lack of adequate job opportunities were not true. Kant also said that the onus of creating employment opportunities was with the private sector. "The government cannot create jobs. The private sector must invest and drive the GDP growth. The government can and will facilitate it," he said, adding that a lot of work has been done in the country in this direction. The senior official also said that the government was encouraging start-ups as "they are the ones who will create jobs in the future". "People need to be trained. There will be new kinds of jobs in the future, and they will also be higher paid jobs," he said. In his keynote address at the session, Kant stressed that the country needs to grow at an average of 9-10% for decades to create jobs, and reiterated that this was not possible without an increased focus on the manufacturing sector. He said that the government was focusing a lot on infrastructure development, as it was a sure shot way to boost economic growth. He also expressed concern that India tended to get into sunset industries instead of making inroads in sunrise sectors. NITI CEO’S CONVOY MEETS MINOR ACCIDENT

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