Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said that the decline in employment by the top 200 companies in India over the past few years was a “very good sign”, The Hindu reported. “The fact is that today, the youth of tomorrow is not looking to be a job seeker alone. He wants to be a job creator,” Goyal said at the India Economic Forum. “The country today is seeing more and more young people wanting to be entrepreneurs.”

He was responding to a statement by Bharti Airtel chairperson Sunil Mittal, who flagged corporate concern about the decline in job growth. “If these top 200 companies are not going to generate jobs, it’s going to get harder and harder for the whole business community to pull society along with it,” Mittal said. “And then, you will leave millions and millions [of people] behind.”

Justifying his claim that more Indians wanted to be entrepreneurs, Goyal said the advent of three-dimensional manufacturing and artificial intelligence has been game-changers. “...With innovation playing a central role, more and more people are getting engaged on their own, and are looking to become franchisees, people who come up with ideas and want to be independent,” he said.

Goyal added that the Railways itself was capable of creating “not less than 10 lakh jobs” in a year.