According to a report tabled in the Lok Sabha by the Minister of State for Finance, per capita net national income (NNI), in 2024-25 at constant prices was a meagre Rs 1,14,710. An analysis by Anil Swarup, a former Secretary to the Government of India, shows that after excluding the richest 5 per cent of population, per capita income of the balance 95 per cent of our population, at current prices, is US$ 1,130 i.e., hardly Rs 1 lakh. Despite PM Modi’s exhortation to youth to be job creators and not job seekers, it would be extremely difficult to set up a viable business with such limited resources ~ and the lack of vocational and business acumen that plagues Indian youth.
Young men, and young women also, are willing to work but the Government and society have no use for their services. According to the Madhya Pradesh Employee Selection Board (the infamous Vyapam in a new avatar), 9.76 lakh applications were received for 7,500 posts of constables, i.e., 130 applications for each post. Applicants included 42 Ph. Ds and over 12,000 engineers. Similarly, 50 lakh applications, with a proportionately higher number of over-qualified applicants, were received for 60,000 police constable posts in Uttar Pradesh. The 2018 mega-recruitment drive of Railways was record-breaking in many respects; 2,83,747 vacancies were notified, for which more than 4 crore applications were received and 1,32,000 appointments were made.
The balance appointments were not made even after four years; agitated candidates took to the streets, burnt a train, thereby drawing public attention to their plight. The chronology of events is telling; tests were conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, and results were declared in December 2021 and January 2022, after which, instead of being issued with appointment letters, candidates were told that the tests they had appeared in were the first stage and another round of tests were to follow. Apparently, the recruitment drive had fizzled out after conclusion of General Elections 2019 and Bihar Legislative Assembly Elections, 2020. The Railway’s NTPC (Non-technical Popular Categories) tests gained so much notoriety that the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. wrote to the Railways asking them not to use the abbreviation NTPC for their exam.
Leaked question papers of competitive examinations and delaying recruitment processes indefinitely are another blight on the hopes of unemployed youth. No examination seems to be untouched, be it constable recruitment tests in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, BPSC examination in Bihar, or the head clerk examination in Gujarat; leaks are being reported regularly from almost all States, for all levels of examinations. Irregularities in Government recruitment is nothing new; a former Chief Minister of Haryana, Om Prakash Chautala, underwent ten years’ imprisonment for illegally recruiting more than three thousand junior basic teachers. A decade ago, the Chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission was arrested for running a Rs.100 crore job racket.
Then there was the constable recruitment scam in UP, in which around 22,500 constables were recruited in highly suspicious circumstances, in UP Police during 2004-06. More recent is the West Bengal SSC scam, where more than Rs.125 crore of cash, gold and foreign currency were recovered from a former education minister and his female associate, allegedly as a quid pro quo for providing teaching jobs. As of now, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached unaccounted assets worth Rs 636 crore in the case. The stakes involved in recruitment scams are directly relatable to the gloomy employment scenario; latest CMIE data shows that 44.5 per cent of Indians in the 20-24 age bracket are unemployed, despite many of them holding graduate, or even postgraduate degrees.
On the other hand, industry leaders rue the shortage of good workers in their establishments. Thus, beyond a surfeit of candidates, there is another reason for mass unemployment; only 54.8 per cent of Indian graduates are considered employable (India Skills Report 2025). In a recent newspaper article, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee, pointed out that most of our youth waste the best years of their life in preparing for Government recruitment examinations at which they have little chance of succeeding. He suggested that instead of competitive examinations, which often test skills that are not relevant for the position on offer, there should be a five-year apprenticeship for all posts, after which the best candidates should be given employment.
However, Banerjee’s proposed solution is like a strip of band-aid, for a deep wound. The malaise runs much deeper; societal attitudes place a government inspector much ahead of a self-made entrepreneur, what to say of a private sector executive. The mindless rush for government jobs will only end when the glamour, power, and oopari aamdani of government employees is curbed ~ a highly improbable event. Then, we have remnants of our accursed caste system, which places a person doing nothing ahead of a person working honestly. Living in a small town during my younger days, I was perplexed when my farmer friends bemoaned the shortage of labour at their farms.
One day, when I suggested to one of them that given their large family, they could themselves do much of the required work, I got a lesson in what an upper-caste person should do or not do ~ physical labour being a huge taboo. Attitudinal change may take time; in the short-term tailoring the education system to jobs available could work wonders. At present, the antiquated syllabus of most universities prepares students for ministerial jobs ~ just as it did in Macaulay’s time. With computers being far more efficient at repetitive tasks, there is little need for this kind of expertise; a telling indication is that even in reputed universities, graduate-level liberal arts and science courses draw few meritorious students ~ such courses being continued only because of institutional inertia and the for benefit of existing faculty. Many engineering colleges established in the 1990s, which used to offer their seats at a premium, are now on the verge of closure.
The reason is not far to seek; the IT industry that employed these engineers, most of them at basic jobs ~ is laying-off workers at record speed ~ in the last nine months 60,000 information technology (IT) employees have been laid-off in India, and the US IT industry has consistently been laying-off around 1 lakh workers annually for the last few years. The situation is predicted to get much worse, with AI making much of the present IT workforce redundant. The solution lies in a revamp of the education system by prioritising vocational education. National Education Policy, 2020 aims at integrating vocational education with academics, so that at least half of the students have exposure to vocational education by 2025. A Centrally Sponsored Scheme ‘Samagra Shiksha,’ covering Government and Government-aided schools, was launched for this purpose.
However, with most people seeing vocational learning as good only for other people’s children, even a small part of the target of fifty per cent enrolment in vocational courses, has not been achieved. The only way to popularise vocational education is to involve local industry in this endeavour. They would let local educational institutions know of their requirements, and guide them in designing industry-relevant courses. Pass-outs from such tailor-made courses would not have much difficulty in securing jobs. Such initiatives are being attempted at several places; the Government of Karnataka has signed an MOU with a car company that will first expose faculty members to the car company’s manufacturing and learning practices, so that they can guide children effectively; the ultimate goal being to enable students from Grades 9 to 12 to gain hands-on industry exposure and develop essential skills for future employment. The NEP document visualised an investment of 6 per cent of our GDP for education, but till today actual expenditure is only half of that. Graduates from adequately funded colleges like the IITs and the new crop of private universities, which charge a bomb, hardly face unemployment ~ either in India or abroad.
The problem of unemployment can be solved only when all colleges offer the same quality of education ~ making their pass-outs employable. Good education is essential for all worthwhile things in life ~ not jobs alone. As Michelle Obama, attorney, author, and the erstwhile American first lady, had pointed out: “The ability to read, write, and analyse; the confidence to stand up and demand justice and equality; the qualifications and connections to get your foot in the door and take your seat at the table ~ all of that starts with education.
(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)