By now you all must have seen videos of the near-stampede scenario in Mumbai. More than 25,000 aspirants had gathered for the 2,216 Air India airport loader posts. The authorities did not anticipate this gigantic number of candidates for the walk-in interview and had to send them back with just their CVs deposited.
The problem is if I remove the details from this video, this would resemble the countless such scenarios across our country, where an exuberant number of candidates have come looking for a minimal number of jobs.
This struggle of the disproportionate ratio is not just in government jobs. A few days ago, a video went viral from Ankleshwar, Gujarat, where nearly 1800 job-seekers had appeared for just 10 posts in a private firm.
We could see the aspirants pushing and shoving each other near the entrance of the interview venue and such was the chaos there that the railing they were pushed against collapsed, fortunately to no reported injuries.
It’s not just about the meager number of jobs, it’s also about the nature of jobs. There are numerous instances of candidates with higher educational qualifications being jobless and applying for jobs that do not match their credentials.
In an instance in UP, we saw 5 lakh post-graduates applying for the post of safai karamchari (sweepers) in Kanpur Municipal Corporation, because of the ‘job security’ and the ‘benefits’ of government employment. We are by no means demeaning the job of sweepers and peons, they are indispensable parts of our daily lives and are as respectful as any profession.
The concern is about the disparity seen between the qualifications required for the job and the qualifications of the candidates applying for them.
I remember nearly 10 years ago, I saw economists celebrate India having the largest youth population in the world. This demographic advantage was seen as a national asset and drove optimism about the future of the Indian economy. India has nearly more than 50% of its population below the age of 25. In the year 2000, there were around 35% unemployed youth which nearly doubled to 65% in the year 2022. So clearly, the job growth over the past two decades has not matched the population growth.
Apart from the lack of job opportunities, the machinery of the government exams is also rotten. According to research by The Indian Express, there have been at least 48 instances of paper leaks
in 16 states over the past five years, affecting around 1.4 crore job-seekers.
To put it in perspective, it’s not just about the lives of 1.4 crore aspirants, it affects 1.4 crore families from all over the country. A couple of years ago when I was doing my graduation, there was chatter of lay-offs from all around and the salaries offered in the placement drive were lesser than the previous year.
In the PSU recruitments, there were only contractual offers rather than permanent ones, which is the reality now for a lot of government jobs. Even my friends in the biggest IIMs are struggling to find jobs and these legacy institutes had to rely upon their alumni to maintain a reputable placement report.
If we try to decode the reason for this dearth of job opportunities, the first thing that comes to mind is the lack of good skill development and educational infrastructure in the country. The seats in the best colleges like IITs, IIMs, and AIIMS are just not enough for our 1.4 billion population.
The rather mediocre engineering education in our country has ensured that over 80 percent of them are not even employable. The ruling government’s promises of providing 2 crore jobs per year seem like a mirage of the past. The worst part is, whoever sits in the power, whenever a financial report regarding unemployment comes, the blame game starts. From politicians to authorities, the vicious cycle of transfer of blame is endless.
Sure, COVID had impacted the job scene across the globe with the layoffs increasing to such an extent that there were live counters online available for this. But it’s a thing of the past and the authorities can’t blame the virus anymore.
A lot of the time, the brightest business minds leave our country and invest or establish their businesses abroad. This becomes more concerning as foreign investments are not coming to our country at the required rate because of the lack of ease in doing business here due to factors like bribery.
Forget the brightest and the richest people, Indians are ready to even go and work in war-torn parts of the world like Israel and Ukraine because of their dire need of a job.
We have seen global and Indian firms making huge profits, but not employing new people. This has come at the cost of laying off numerous employees and making the existing ones overwork.
This has led to an all-time high burnout in corporate, with India topping the list.
It has also adversely affected the mental health of the employees. If we talk about the number of suicides due to unemployment, it has also doubled between 2012 and 2020.
Unemployment has risen to be one of the biggest obstacles in the dream of making India a global superpower. The Indian Employment Report presents the grim figure of only 1 out of 3 Indians not in employment, education, or training.
With the advent of AI, there would certainly be more job losses, but on the up-side, there would be thousands of new ones created. As a nation, we should not be dependent on just government jobs and big enterprises for employment. By thinking out of the box to harness the power of tech, we should also focus on empowering small and medium enterprises. For the youth in today’s age, it has become imperative to constantly upskill, follow emerging trends, and align their training according to the demands of the market to land the job of their dreams.
