“Formalisation of jobs from unorganized sector to organized sector should not be treated as job creation. Even in this budget, there appears no clear direction on expenditure for creating jobs and this might stay as a declaration only,” said Subramanyam, CEO of Ascent HR, a recruitment and staffing firm

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Quoting an independent study while announcing the budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the measures taken by the government have started showing results and a recent study has shown that 70 lakh formal jobs will be created this year.

Everyone heavily applauded.

However, human resource specialists do not agree. “Formalisation of jobs from unorganized sector to organized sector should not be treated as job creation. Even in this budget, there appears no clear direction on expenditure for creating jobs and this might stay as a declaration only,” said Subramanyam, CEO of Ascent HR, a recruitment and staffing firm.

Industry has also criticised the reduction of women’s EPF contribution to 8% in the first three years. “There’s no reason to cheer the move because women employees are not lacking net pay as the only driver for their first three years in employment. They hardly get married given the current trends during that period. On the contrary, PF is a great investment given its current return on investment as good small savings which should be encouraged and not dissuaded,” Subramanyam added.

Moreover, the proposal to amend the EPF Act to provide specific reduction of the EPF contribution rate for women employees for a period of three years appears to aim at appeasing the significant female workforce in India. “The modalities will have to be looked into considering that the employer will be required to contribute at the extant rate of 12% against 8% proposed for the women employees,” said Anshul Prakash, Partner, Khaitan & Co.

Indian Staffing Federation, an apex body on flexi staffing industry has highlighted that among the several asks of the association, one of the requirement was a step towards ease of doing business and to promote entrepreneurship labour law compliances across the country. “We need these processes to become paperless, presence-less and cashless. There hasn’t been any significant announcement in this regard,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, president, ISF.

Indian arm of US-based employment-related search engine for job listings, Indeed, said, “While there was anticipation about a new employment policy, there was no indication of a formal policy being announced anytime soon.”

Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed India, “In addition to improving employability, the need of the hour is to modernize the Indian hiring industry through a more advanced platform that caters to the evolving requirements of job seekers in the 21st century.”