One year of Modi government: Jobs, investments remain PM's Achilles heel

Creating jobs and jump starting the investment cycle remain challenges for the Modi government as it completes a year in office. Expectations are that the steps taken in the past 12 months will start yielding results.
The slow progress on both these counts may have disappointed those expecting miracles.
But it must be acknowledged that steps to make it easier to do business, the push to manufacturing, Digital India, smart cities, industrial clusters and opening up insurance and defence production to FDI are all meant to create jobs.
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The government's determination to bite the bullet on labour reforms is a signal of its intent. But these efforts will need to move beyond slogans and campaigns.
The government has moved to ease project approvals and efforts are on to get stalled projects off the ground.
The next few months will be critical and, experts say, there's need to accelerate stalled projects. The Make in India programme can create thousands of jobs but the government will need to ensure that the challenge is met head on. Massive efforts, including cooperation of states, are needed to get the manufacturing sector roaring.
Balance sheets of several companies are stretched and banks are burdened with bad loans which make the task of shoring up investments difficult. The government expects state-run firms to fill the gap and public-private partnership projects to get growth back on track. There are signals of the investment cycle turning as business confidence improves.
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“The new government was elected around its belief that employment, employability and education can change the lives of our youth like nothing else. Twelve months are probably enough to just lay the foundations if not witness outcomes. My report card would read excellent around foundations for formal job creation, meets expectations around skills and quite poor around education," said Rituparna Chakraborty, senior vicepresident and co-founder of staffing firm TeamLease.
“The foundations being built shall yield result over time and one cannot expect an exponential impact.However, action bias around labour reform, smart cities, ease of doing business shall bring optimism which shall push job creation. Bigticket reform around labour codes, changes in Factories Act, IDA, GST and others have a long battle ahead," she said.