Modi Govt Sitting on Lakhs of Vacancies, While Youth Fight for Jobs
Subodh Varma
India is a land of ironies but the recent Republic Day saw one of the most gut-wrenching incidents. While a grand parade marched in New Delhi showcasing India’s military might and progress, widespread protests were taking place in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, as angry youth took to streets demanding that the flawed selection process for railway jobs be rectified.
The numbers behind these protests are mind-boggling: Indian Railways had advertised about 35,000 jobs in 2019. Over 1.25 crore persons applied. Ultimately, when the examination was held in phases between December 2020 and July 2021, some 60 lakh actually sat for it. What caused their anger to burst out now was the arbitrary fiddling around that the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) appeared to be doing with exam phases and candidates.
Note the numbers: 35,000 posts, 1.25 crore applicants. That’s a reflection of both, the dire employment situation in India as well as the rejection of private jobs by aspirants, who prefer the security of government jobs even if they may get paid less. Lakhs of young men and women work day and night in difficult circumstances to clear these competitive exams for government jobs.
Answering a query in Parliament, the Prime Minister’s Office, which is in charge of the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, said on July 29, 2021, that a grand total of 4.45 lakh persons were recruited by the Government of India between 2016-17 and 2020-21 by three of its recruitment agencies — Union Public Services Commission (UPSC), Staff Selection Commission (SSC) and Railway Recruitment Board (RRB).
Central Govt Vacancies
There is a huge chasm between existing vacancies and the government’s efforts to recruit new persons to fill these up. The same Parliament statement referred to above gave details of vacancies in Central government ministries/departments. [See table below] A total of over 8.72 lakh posts are lying vacant, it was revealed. This is after the 4.45 lakh recruited in the past five years.
Some of the ministries/departments actually contribute the lion’s share of vacancies, as shown above. For instance, about 2.48 lakh civilian posts are lying vacant in the defence ministry, some 1.28 lakh in the home ministry and over 2.37 lakh in the Railways. Even an important ministry, such as health and family welfare – remember the COVID pandemic? – has over 2,000 vacant posts. It looks like the Bharatiya Janata Party government is not even true to its own avowed concerns – the water resources ministry, which includes Ganga Rejuvenation in its amended name now, has over 4,500 vacancies.
These vacant posts are arising because the Narendra Modi government upholds the rather suspect and discredited notion of “minimum government” cutting back on spending on salaries, benefits etc. So, new appointments are a red flag for them. To some extent, the slack is picked up by appointing contract employees for fixed terms. These employees are paid very low wages and get practically no benefits.
Of the 8.72 lakh vacancies, 7.56 lakh or 87% are Grade C Non-Gazetted posts. Just 2.4% of the vacancies are in the Grade A category. The guillotine has thus fallen on the lower paid ranks while the elite officers have ridden out the “minimum governance” dictum quite well, it appears.
Other Vacancies Controlled by Central Govt
The above description was for vacancies in ministries and departments. But besides these, the Central government directly controls a range of institutions and bodies, including public sector undertakings, judiciary, armed forces etc. Vacancies are rife in these too, as can be seen from the following sample. [See table below] There are many more institutions and bodies like this, but information is not easily available for all.
As can be seen, there are over 25,000 vacancies in different educational institutions run by the Central government, which include Central universities, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs), Kendriya Vidyalayas, IITs and IIMs. Public sector banks have over 41,000 vacancies, High Courts are short of over 400 judges, etc.
But the biggest chunk of vacancies exist in two bodies: armed forces (over 1.22 lakh), central armed police forces (like CRPF, BSF, SSB, CISF, ITBP, etc) which have over 96,000 vacancies and Gramin Dak Sewaks (postal delivery persons) over 73,000 vacancies.
Clearly, the Modi government is not too worried about the defence of the country or its security domestically although it keeps beating the patriotism drum and exhorting everybody to be a ‘nationalist’ and a patriot. Neither is it disturbed by delayed justice, if one goes by the vacancies in judiciary. For the Modi government, saving money matters more than high-flying sermons that it delivers off and on.
Indirectly Controlled Vacancies
Besides the above two categories, the Central government also exerts control over many cadres of employees that are technically under state governments. This happens because funds for such appointments come in large part from Delhi.
An example of this is appointment of health personnel in the National Health Mission (NHM) where bulk of funding comes from the Central government. According to the response of the health minister in Lok Sabha (No.3391) on December 17, 2021, there were over 10,000 doctors posts lying vacant, besides over 9,000 posts of specialists like surgeons, obstetricians, gynaecologists and paediatricians under the NHM. [See table below]
Over 9,000 posts of technical staff, like pharmacists, X-ray technicians and laboratory staff are lying vacant. There were over 18,000 posts of nurses vacant. The scale of these vacancies shows how ill prepared the system was for tackling the pandemic.
All of these could possibly have been filled up with more funding and a push from the Central government to expedite the process. Not only would such an urgent push helped treat thousands of people suffering during the COVID-19 devastation, it would also have provided employment.
The frustration and anger exhibited by youth in Bihar and UP in the past few days at the botched RRB recruitment is just the tip of the iceberg. As the information given above shows, there are lakhs of vacancies in the government sector alone and the Modi government is blithely indifferent to the demands of lakhs of jobless youth to fill these up.
(Courtesy: Newsclick.)
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Over 33% Teaching Faculty Posts Lying Vacant in Central Universities, Shows Govt Data
21 Dec 2021: Over 33% of faculty posts in Central universities are vacant, according to data presented in the Lok Sabha by Annapurna Devi, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education on Monday, December 20. As per the data, of the 18,905 sanctioned faculty posts in the Central universities, 6,333 were vacant as of October 1, 2021.
Of the sanctioned 2,544 posts for professors, only 1,072, that is, 42% of the posts were filled. Of the 5,098 sanctioned posts for associate professors, only 2,702, that is, 53% of the posts were filled. The situation is slightly better for assistant professors, where out of 11,263 sanctioned posts, 12,572, that is 78%, are filled.
The Minister gave this information to the House while answering a question on whether the government is facing a shortage of teachers. “The UGC has further informed that to maintain the quality of education and to cover up the shortage of teachers, Central Universities are adopting different methods, which inter alia, include hiring ad-hoc faculty, Guest Faculty, Contract Faculty and Re-employed Faculty,” she said in a written reply.
Devi added, “The UGC has also framed the guidelines for empanelment of Adjunct-Faculty in Universities and Colleges which enable Higher Educational Institutions to access the eminent teachers and researchers, who have completed their formal association with University / College, to participate in teaching, to collaborate and to stimulate research activities for quality research at M.Phil. and Ph. D. levels.”
According to government data, there are currently 48 Central universities in the country. The number of students in these universities is 7,20,025.
However, there is a major discrepancy in the government data about the number of teachers. The data presented in the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-2020, there are 20,815 teachers employed, but the data does not specify whether or not it includes ad-hoc, guest, contract, and re-employed faculty.
In September 2021, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had given the Central universities a two-month deadline to fill up the 6,000 plus vacancies. “Let us work on a mission mode. During Shikshat Parv [Education Festival], let us start a campaign, a mission to fill up these 6,000 seats within September and October,” he had said in his first interaction with the Vice-Chancellors of 45 Central universities. He had added that while there may be a few anomalies at some universities, all institutions should advertise their vacant posts by September 10.
Vice-Chancellors who had participated in the meeting said there was a special focus on backlog vacancies — positions which have not been filled despite having been advertised — as well as on vacant positions which have been reserved for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class communities. Out of 6,229 vacant positions, 1,767 were for the OBC category, 1,012 for the SCs and 592 for the STs, Pradhan had said.
However, while answering the question in Lok Sabha on Monday, the Minister of State failed to mention whether the universities had followed the direction, and were actually filling the vacant posts. The data presented was from October 1, and there is no way to know whether the universities had acted on the order. The data just shows that the number of vacancies saw a slight increase between the Minister’s order and October 1, instead of decreasing.
Earlier, on December 15, Pradhan had told Parliament that over 10,000 faculty positions were vacant across Central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Of the total 10,814 vacancies, 6,535 are in central universities including IGNOU, 403 are in IIMs and 3,876 are in IITs, the minister said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
When asked whether the government had any plans to give more concessions in eligibility-related norms for appointments in the universities, the Minister of State said that the appointments are done by the universities as per the University Grants Commission guidelines.
(Courtesy: Newsclick.)
