“Anyone who has lived in an area with high unemployment knows how it erodes social bonds, lowers the resilience of the unemployed and their families, and damages the prospects of the next generation.” — Sharan Leslie Burrow
Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. The government should put on these pinching shoes and then decide how to walk and where to walk. To feel the sorrows of unemployment, one must go through the above lines penned down by Sharan Leslie Burrow, the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and former President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).
About the unemployment situation in India, referring to CMIE, the Economic Times reported on January 20, 2022,
“India has 53 million unemployed people as of December 2021 and a huge proportion of them are women, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy said. Of these, 35 million are the unemployed who are actively seeking work while 17 million are those who, though willing to work, are not actively seeking it, CMIE said.”
The Russia-Ukraine war crisis has shown the true picture of education in India. There were more than 18,000 Indian medical students stuck in Ukraine. Thousands of Indian students go to study medical courses in such countries, as they either do not get admission in Indian medical colleges or cannot afford the huge fees charged by private medical colleges in India.
There are nearly 91,000 seats in the medical colleges in the country, out of which only 50% seats are in public colleges, whose fees is within the reach of common people. But the fees of private colleges extends beyond Rs 1 crore, which is out of reach for most families in the country.
In foreign countries such as Ukraine, Russia and others, the fees for the whole course range between Rs 15 lakhs to 45 lakhs. That is why Indian students go to these countries to study medical courses. Now the question arises, why is India not in a position to provide educational facilities to its students in their own country when much smaller countries are doing so? Why is the extension of educational institutes not a priority for the Indian government? Public murmuring may someday echo: ‘Why is India spending its public tax money on erecting statues instead of opening medical institutes?’
Presently, all states across India are facing both unemployment as well as a lack of educational facilities, but Haryana has the highest unemployment rate, so this article will discuss these parameters in reference to Haryana alone.
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has reported that at the closing of February, 2022, Haryana’s unemployment rate was 31% as against India’s 8%. As per the figures reported by the CMIE for December 2021, Haryana topped the states in unemployment clocking at 34.1%, whereas the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 7.4%. Haryana was followed by Rajasthan at 27.1%, Jharkhand at 17.3%, Bihar at 16%, and J&K 15%.
But rejecting CMIE’s unemployment figures, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar claimed that CMIE’s data is not based on facts as the ‘official’ data, as per the state government, shows that the unemployment rate stands at 6.1%. Khattar said that if unemployment were at 34.1%, the scenario would have been completely different.
If the Chief Minister’s claim is be taken as correct and there is indeed only 6% unemployment in the state, then for whom is the state government organising the Rojgar Melas and why is it adamant on reserving 75% of private sector jobs for the Haryana domicile youth despite the companies’ resistance, while refusing to reserve 75% of the government jobs?
On March 5, 2022, Khattar announced the ‘Mukhyamantri Shato Udyami Sarathi Yojana’, under which work will be done to take forward about 15 lakh low income families of Haryana to the level of an annual income of Rs 1.8 lakh. It clearly shows that there are at least 15 lakh families in the state that the government is targeting to uplift to an annual income of Rs 1.8 lakh. Are these families fully employed? No, they are either unemployed or partially employed. They need full time employment. Also, Haryana government’s job portal HREX.gov.in shows the number of job seeker as 8,84,591 (as on March 12, 2022).
How Will The Haryana Government Overcome The Unemployment Problem In The State?
While responding to a question raised during the Question Hour on the second day of the Budget session of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha on March 3, 2022, Haryana Minister of State for Labour and Employment Anoop Dhanak said that in order to provide employment opportunities to the youth in the private sector, the Employment Department has set a target of organising 200 Rojgar Melas every year across the state, under which at least one mela or placement drive will be organised every quarter by the District Employment Exchange in every district of the state.
The Minister of State for Labour and Employment lay stress on providing jobs in private sector, whereas thousands of posts in government departments are lying vacant. Why is the government not filling these to provide jobs to its unemployed youth?
If the figures of education department alone are noticed, the situation becomes clear automatically. As per statement of the Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar during the Budget session of the Vidhan Sabha on March 4, 2022, as many as 38,476 vacancies of teachers exist in government schools of Haryana against a requirement of 1,22,798.
While stating that Haryana has 24,951 schools of which 14,491 were government ones, the Minister, in his reply, said that against 1,20,966 sanctioned posts, 72,188 regular teachers are working. As many as 12,134 guest teachers are also employed, taking the teacher availability to 84,322. And 15,265 vacancies exist at the PGT level, 18,236 at the TGT level, 1,046 posts of head teacher are vacant, while the department was short of 3,929 JBT/PRT.
The position of higher education is also not different. Haryana Pradesh Congress President Kumari Selja alleged that at present the college education has been left to the will of the God. She said:
“About five lakh students study in government colleges, but only 3,647 lecturers/professors are deployed to teach them. At present, only 48% of the staff is posted here as compared to the requirement. That is, there is a shortage of 52 percent staff. In such a situation, the students have to bear the brunt of lack of staff. There are 172 government colleges in the state. According to the Higher Education Department, as per the workload in these colleges, there should be 7,559 lecturers/professors, but the sanctioned posts are only 5,068. Also, against these sanctioned posts, only 3,647 lecturers are posted. To say 1,984 extension lecturers have also been posted, but due to not being regular and feeling insecure in the job, they are not able to pay that much attention. To meet the shortage of staff, the government should either regularize these extension lecturers or stop playing with the future of students by recruiting new ones.”
It is also pertinent to mention here that for their demand of job security college extension lecturers who have been working for the last 10 years are on agitation and some of them are sitting on dharna and undertaking fast unto death from February 21, 2022, onward in Panchkula under the banner of the Haryana College Extension Lecturer Association. Also, there are 12,134 guest teachers who have been working for more than 15 years in government schools in Haryana.
Why does the government not regularise the services of these extension lecturers and guest teachers? Why are they not being paid at par with their regular counterparts? Why is the government providing second-grade treatment to its staff? If the government thinks that they do not fulfill the eligibility norms and are incompetent to be regularised, then why has the government been marring the future of the students by providing education through these incompetent educators for more than 10 years? And if they have the required qualifications and are competent enough, except some ifs and buts, they should be regularised immediately and stop further temporary or contractual recruitments.
But these days, the state government has adopted the path of outsourcing, where it hires workforce through some private firms at nearly on one third or less salary and takes no responsibility to provide them with regular jobs.
This clearly shows the intention of the government; it wants to get rid of the responsibility of managing government employees and step ahead on the path of privatisation even in government departments. But this step will create big problem, such as the uncertainty of job, future social insecurity in the coming years and so on.
Just like business owners, political parties presently running the Haryana government also keep profit as the only motive in their mind. They should read these lines written by Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security and unemployment insurance, and eliminate labour laws and farm programmes, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are HL Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”