 I guess most of us would agree that any process of growth, economic transformation, economic development must have adequate and decent employment as among the most important objectives, right? I think on that very few people would disagree. If you look at what has happened to employment generation, the numbers, the underlying processes, etc., there is indeed a lot of contestation. You have multiple sources, you know, sort of different sources. Of course, for a while there was a lot of… just before the elections, if you recall, lot of government spokesperson saying that we should be looking at what mudra loan might have achieved, what is happening through EPFO, what is happening through all this formalization and so on and so forth, right? And basically, let's not bother about the standard sources which have been used all these years, etc. We need to look at these new sources, public sources, private sources, a lot of these debates. I don't intend to get into that because we don't really have much time to get into these relevant details, which are indeed important. I'm basically giving you a picture based on something which again would be considered by most economists working on these issues as a very credible source. This is basically a database prepared by RBI ILO. It's a Key Labor and Employment Market Indicators. So, we have this for several years now and I'll give you just to indicate some numbers from what has happened during the last roughly four decades or so to get a sense of where we are. So, if you look at this particular data source, which basically uses NSSO and, you know, some adjustments here and there, etc., so with that, what we have, if you look at 1980s, when we possibly had a growth rate which for the period, let's say, since 2000, was on an average, somewhat less, Surjit has already talked about the controversy about growth and so on. But, you know, we can say that, let's say, the growth rate during 1980s was possibly 20, 25, 30% lower than what we saw from, let's say, 2000 C4 to about 11, 12, 13, 14, and subsequently we know that there has been a considerable slowdown and so on. If you look at the employment generation during the decade of the 80s at a growth rate which was somewhat lower, let's forget about the exact numbers there, on an average during that decade annually, the rate of growth of employment was 1.92 using this particular database, right? Subsequent decade, it comes down, okay, significantly, next decade further come down, if you look at last four years, okay, for the economy as a whole, in fact, it has been negative. If you go by this particular data source, so if you look at early 80s, on an average, the employment generation was approximately 2.4% to so, even up to late 80s, it's roughly there, okay, so between 2.4, 2.5, that's the kind of growth in employment generation. During 90s it sort of is somewhere around half of, or slightly more than half of that, yeah. Next decade is 0.61 or so. If you look at the last two years for which we have the data from this particular source, it is negative 0.16 and negative 0.08, right? If you, as this data source does it, devise the Indian economy into 27 sectors, right? In 12 out of these 27, it's significant negative, right, so just to give you one or two numbers, if you look at agriculture hunting forestry fishing, early 80s it was plus 1.80, last two years it's been negative 3.5 and 3.6. If you look at mining and quarrying, it was plus 6.54 then early 80s, currently it's negative 1.80, right? So 12 out of 27 sectors it is negative, there's a, basically it's not only job less growth, it's job loss growth in these sectors, right? Many other sectors where you still have positive growth rate in employment, there has been a very significant contraction, there's only two sectors where it actually was higher than what it was during 1980s, out of the 27, right? That's a very, very kind of, you know, as a rough indicator but it also is a very powerful indicator, it tells you that Indian economy is in a state of very serious employment challenge, right? And if you look at the history since independence, you know, it would be a very easy conclusion to arrive at that in terms of employment crisis, the last six years or employment challenge, the last six years have been the worst ever, right? If you take a Quinconium Plus, right? No, there is no getting away from that if we are using the standard acceptable data sources and so on, right? Of course, you also know that there is a lot of discussion on why this has happened, a lot of discussion which point to the acts of commission and omission by Modi II and Modi III Sarkar, right? In particular, Modi II, because we have data basically for that period in the two, and acts of commission, of course, was pointed out by Meena Ketan, demonetization and the way GST was implemented and so on. But I think it's extremely important to appreciate and understand that we should not focus only on what Dr. Singh, the other day Dr. Manmohan Singh described as the man-made blunders of this government. We actually also have to look at the systemic, long-term, structural, policy-driven crisis which has been very much there since Dr. Singh was the finance minister, beginning with the Naseema Rao government and so on. So that is as regards some of the important policy correlates in the aggregate and of course for each sector, then you have to look at particular stories, what were the policies and so on. But for the economy as a whole, we really have to look at how these things panned out during the last three to four decades and so on, right? Of course, in addition to that, we also have to look at and try and understand a number of important features of the global capitalist accumulation regimes, right? And what are the important features there? Again, I mean, I'm sure many of you have been following what my senior colleagues and others in JNU have been talking about for quite some time, you know, the rise and ascendancy of finance capital and what has that done to the overall accumulation processes and so on, right? The emergence of what is known as global production systems and what that does to the rate of employment generation and so on and so forth. More recently, what is being talked about as, you know, industry forward, the implications of that in terms of whether, you know, robos are going to displace human beings in large numbers, et cetera, right? So just to give you one number, for instance, you know, Parshik Basu in a recent paper, he cites this number, he says that if you look at 2015 and 2016, the additional robos and which led to displacement of human beings over this one year period was 227,000. Then he says that this itself is not a very interesting figure. What is interesting is that this was a 25% increase over that period. That is rate at which this is happening, right? And U.S. and China are supposed to be the global leaders in industry four and given the fact that China is still a country which is massively labor surplus, right? The question to ask is why is this happening and so on. So we have to try and understand the new features or the features which have become very prominent as part of the global accumulation regimes as well to understand what is happening in India and elsewhere. So how do we factor in those implications, et cetera? So in general, for instance, we know that the rise of finance capital is something which basically works against the interests of the real economy. So if you can make money through casino activities, et cetera, why do you want to invest in sort of plants and equipment and so on? Fourth, which takes time and thanks, sir. I think we'll take five minutes to share with you. So the first is to try and understand these long-term changes, right? To understand what's happening in employment. As I said, the Modi period is something which is the worst ever. You do a dispassionate, careful analysis of numbers since 1950 or so. Basically, this then also brings you to not only the pace of growth, the rate of GDP, et cetera, but the structure of growth, right? Where both the external and the internal come together. And then you have to look at the sectoral issues. Sectorally, what does it mean, et cetera? So for instance, you have essentially agriculture and, let's say, a whole lot of what you would consider, you know, mass economic activities, economics of the little women and little men, right? MSMEs and things like that, et cetera. So if you look at that, now these have been massively hit. And during this period, we have all the data information if you look at that, right? Agriculture, for instance, according to Professor Patnaak's estimates, Professor Prabhat Patnaak, he tells you that if you look at 2013, 14 and 17, 18, per capita income in agriculture over this period went down by two percent, right? So it's not only, you know, stagnation, but actually there's a decline in income, right? If you look at what happened, you go by the numbers of association of manufacturing enterprises. If you look at that, which is the largest association, incidentally, more than four lakh members, et cetera. Immediately after demonetization and GST implementation, on an average, across different segments, employment losses were in the range of 23 to 38 percent, right? So that's why I said you have to look at the acts of commission, as well as many of these long-run things which are happening. And as a result of that, some sectors have been hit hard, you know, sort of in particular agriculture and small businesses, et cetera, right? And if you look at some of the ground reports from the field and so on for the last couple of years, you know, you have a large number of heart-rending stories from everywhere. You go to yesterday, Anna Mitra was sharing with me something which has come in mint, right? Lots of field reports, et cetera, and we would, you know, strongly urge you to look at some of those things. So essentially you have a situation where this has resulted in also a massive demand squeeze. You wouldn't have employment if your livelihoods are disappearing, et cetera. It is to be expected that demand would be massively hit. Something, I think Prof. Jyothi Ghosh had written something in Hindu about a month ago or so. Many of us sitting in this room have been looking at that factor. So that demand squeeze is something, right? Which is one of the major implications of the huge employment crisis and any prospects of a rebound of the Indian economy has to address that. How can that be done? What kind of policy challenges we confront there? And this is my last point. I do not see, as long as we remain in a framework of the kind of neoliberal globalization that we have been witnessing for the last three to four decades or so, any significant improvement in terms of either employment or many of the linkages associated with employment? Yes, we might find, you know, with, let's say, the kind of intervention which was made by the government, the UPA-2, you know, UPA-1 immediately after the 2007, 2008 crisis in terms of injecting a lot of resources. The fiscal deficit has increased substantially and that then helped maintain the level of economic growth and so on. But even during that period, it's not the employment which was really being addressed at all. It was not really the questions of livelihood which were being addressed at all. So you really have to not look at only the growth rate, GDP growth rates, etc., but the consequences of that growth and to understand that what is most important to understand the structures and processes of growth, right? So demand is something which is, as a result of that, you know, overall well-being and livelihoods, etc., all these have been hit very hard. As I said, unless there is a very significant rethink, so it's not simply a matter of just injecting something here and now which can take Indian economy from the point of view of the people at large out of this morass, out of this crisis. Thank you.