Will India’s Unemployment Crisis Be Addressed?

When a private chemical firm announced a recruitment drive for 40 positions in Gujarat’s Bharuch district, it opened up an opportunity for hundreds of job aspirants. The company, Thermax Ltd, booked a hall in a hotel in Ankleshwar expecting about 150 candidates. However, chaos ensued as more than 800 individuals arrived for the walk-in interview. 

A video went viral on social media showing aspirants pushing and shoving each other to get a toehold on a narrow ramp leading to the hotel's entrance where the interviews were being held. Due to overcrowding, a railing collapsed, resulting in a near stampede. Initial reports had cited the numbers of applicants and vacancies as 1,800 and 10, respectively, but it was later revised. While no complaint or injury in the melee was reported to the police, the incident has triggered a war of words between the BJP and Congress over the ‘Gujarat model’. However, it also captured the growing concern around joblessness in India.

In December last year, a security breach in the Parliament had turned the spotlight to the issue of unemployment. Two men had jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors gallery, waving canisters of yellow smoke and shouting slogans against “dictatorship”. When a probe was launched into the act, it was found out that the accused miscreants were protesting over rising unemployment, along with farmer issues and Manipur violence. It was also found out that at least four of the six accused were unemployed at the time. 

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Institute of Human Development (IHD) in their India Employment Report 2024, released ahead of Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, cited that youth from nearly 83 per cent of the unemployed workforce in India. The report also stated that the share of youngsters with secondary or higher education in the total unemployed youth has almost doubled in the last two decades from 35.2% in 2000 to 65.7% in 2022. This was particularly concerning as it signalled lesser number of quality jobs with social security.

The Opposition, which raised joblessness as one of its major electoral issues, raked it up again following the Gujarat incident. Terming it the “disease of unemployment”, Congress senior leader Rahul Gandhi said that it had become an epidemic in India. “The ‘disease of unemployment’ has taken the form of an epidemic in India, and BJP-ruled states have become the ‘epicentre’ of this disease. The ‘future of India’ jostling in queues for a common job is the reality of Narendra Modi’s ‘Amritkal’,” the Leader of Opposition posted in Hindi on X.

Meanwhile, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge linked the stampede to other recent issues around recruitment. "The BJP's promise of providing two crore jobs annually -- Paper leak, recruitment corruption, education mafia, keeping government jobs vacant for years, knowingly not filling SC/ST/OBC/EWS posts, recruitment on contract by bringing schemes like Agniveer, and leaving crores of youth to wander from door to door' -- has fallen prey to all these!" he said.

Even in the pre-poll survey conducted by CSDS-Lokniti about issues that impact the voting decisions of citizens, unemployment, along with inflation, emerged as the top concern for respondents, with 62 per cent of them saying that getting a job was tougher than it was five years ago. It was one of the main reasons the BJP failed to achieve ‘400 par’ results that it claimed.

According to a month-on-month data provided by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s unemployment rate rose to an eight-month high of 9.2 per cent in June 2024, up from 7 per cent in the previous month. 

However, the government has repeatedly denied the argument around unemployment. In a recent press conference at the BJP headquarters, party national spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam refuted the Congress’ claims, saying that about 12.5 crore jobs were created in the last 10 years of the Modi government and that the latest RBI report showed the creation of "five crore jobs in 2023-24 alone".

Back in January 2022, violent protests broke out in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – two of the most populous states – about the unemployment crisis. Angry mobs burned train cars and tires, and blocked rail traffic alleged irregularities in the recruitment process for jobs in the government-run rail sector. Similar protests have been witnessed several times since then as jobs crisis appears to deepen. The brunt of it is often borne by the youth, between 18 and 29 years. The government schemes around employment have often been criticised by analysts for not doing enough.

With the Union Budget coming up, all eyes will once again shift to the government and what it has in store to address the growing concern and bring relief to job seekers.