Relevance: GS 2: Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development, and Employment.

Key Phrases: Joblessness, Agnipath scheme, hire and fire, contractual employment, public good, public service, government service, social security, compensation, Central Public Sector Enterprise.

Context:

• In 2019, an Indian citizen died of suicide every hour due to joblessness, poverty, or bankruptcy, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
• About 25,000 Indians died of suicide between 2018 and 2020, said the Union Government in the Rajya Sabha in February this year.
• Several unemployed people in India resort to protests — thousands burnt railway coaches in January 2022 over alleged flaws in the railway recruitment process and more recently, protests were held in different parts of country over the Agnipath scheme.

Recent incidents ofthe culture of hire and fire:

• Recently, Haryana and Delhi have terminated the services of over hundreds of contractual health workers (nurses, sweepers, security guards, paramedical staff) who had been hired during the pandemic.
• Additionally, over 8,300 panchayat and rural development contractual staff in Assam staged protests in February 2022. Even after working for 12-14 years they had not been given bonuses, allowances, pension, or pay revisions.
• In April 2022, some 200 contractual workers of Chhattisgarh’s State electricity department were canned-charged and arrested.

The problem is two-fold:

• Insufficient pace of filling vacancies:
  • There were over 60 lakh vacancies in the Government across all levels in July 2021. Of these, over 9.1 lakh were in the Central Government, while about 2 lakh vacancies were in PSU banks.
  • Additionally, there were over 5.3 lakh vacancies in the State police, while primary schools were estimated to have some 8.3 lakh vacancies.
  • The Government has sought to push for the recruitment of 10 lakh people in a mission mode over 1.5 years.
  • However, this would fall short of the size of the problem. There is a need for greater ambition on this front.
• Available vacancies skewed towards contractual jobs:
  • In 2014, about 43% of Government employees (about 12.3 million) had non-permanent or contractual jobs, with about 6.9 million working in key flagship welfare schemes (Anganwadi workers, for instance) with low wages (in some cases, lower than the minimum wage) and little, if any, social security cover, as per the Indian Staffing Industry Research 2014 report.
  • By 2018, the share of Government employees in this category had risen to 59%. For Central Public Sector Enterprises, the share of contractual (and non-permanent) employees increased from 19% to 37% (reaching 4,98,807 in March 2020), with permanent employees dropping in share by 25%.
  • Consider select PSUs. ONGC had contractual employees from over 81% of its staff in March 2020.
  • Some States have sought to take this further — in 2020, while the pandemic led to mass unemployment, the State Government in Uttar Pradesh sought to amend recruitment for Group B and C employees (of which there were about 9 lakh in 2020 in U.P.), with a push for increasing contractual employment (for five years), with such employees not offered allowances and typical benefits.

Job opportunities

• Renewable Energy:
  • There is significant potential for job creation in renewable power generation (for example, in rooftop solar power generation, manufacturing of solar panel modules, and end-use servicing).
• Waste management:
  • On the waste management front, there is significant scope for expanding waste water treatment capacity, with the building and management of treatment plants for sewer waste and faecal sludge treatment plants leading to the generation of jobs.
  • Encouraging solid waste treatment practices (such as dry waste collection, and micro-composting) could create about 300 jobs per year in a city municipal corporation.
• E-vehicles:
  • A push for adopting electric vehicles and encouraging green mobility would require significant manpower, leading to the generation of green jobs.
• Urban farming:
  • In addition, we must continue to encourage urban farming, with significant job potential in permaculture, gardening, and nursery management.
• Reform in PSUs:
  • Perhaps another avenue of selective PSU reform could also be considered — a PSU with greater autonomy, with the government retaining control via a holding firm, can also be subject to the right incentives.
  • Surely, Indian PSUs could aspire to be as large and efficient as the Chinese ones.
• Investing in public goods:
  • Such spending will eventually lead to an increase in consumer demand and have strong multiplier effects, while generally improving the productivity and quality of life in India’s cities and villages.
  • Expanding public service provisioning will lead to the creation of good quality jobs, along with skilled labour, offering us social stability.

Conclusion:

• Government jobs have lost their shine and there is a need to attract talent to the government rather than downsising or simply avoiding the cost of pensions and benefits, one should right-size government.
• The public services require more doctors, teachers, engineers, and fewer data entry clerks.
• Reforms advocated by the Administrative Reforms Commission should be the initial step.
• This is the time to build capacity for an efficient civil service that can meet today’s challenges – providing a corruption-free welfare system, running a modern economy, and providing increasingly better public goods.
• ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ used to be a driving motto for the Government of the day.
• Improved public service delivery, through better compensation, should be our ethos.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. Discuss the problems associated with government employment and suggest measures to deal with them.