Piyush Goyal was asked about unemployment and the NSSO report; this is what he said

After presenting an interim budget that Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a “trailer for what will take India to the path of development” after the Lok Sabha elections, acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal sat down for an interview where he was asked about a controversial employment report that the government has been accused of not releasing.

Asked when it would be released, the finance minister said he didn’t know when. “The ministry of statistics would know,” Goyal told ANI.

The minister said there had been a formalisation of the economy after demonetisation which had also not been measured so far and that would also benefit people of the country. “The fact that jobs are going could be a narrative of some people,” he said, adding that while India has become the world’s fastest growing economy, the nature of jobs had also changed.

He then went on to speak about how if an NTPC coal-fired power plant is built it would show a certain amount of employment that would show up in the statistics. However, he said, if the same amount of electricity is generated through solar power then many more people are employed but they don’t show up in the employment statistics.

When the interviewer countered that the jobs were not formal ones, the minister retorted that it was merely her viewpoint. Goyal then spoke about a man he had met who had started installing solar power plants in a startup because people had realised the benefits of solar power. He also said that solar power generation had grown 10 times in the last five years.