Where Are The Jobs?

India is staring at a crisis: the cohort of unemployed is growing. But the problem is deeper than mere lack of jobs. So Sitharaman's solutions in Budget 2024 will not be the silver bullet for the crisis

- Parth Singh and Abdul Haleem Sherif

The visuals were shocking. Thousands of young women sitting or lying on pavements, railway stations and overbridges across Mumbai. All biding their time for the physical examination of the city police's recruitment drive early last month. Over 1 lakh had applied for 1,257 posts of constables and drivers.

In June, Maharashtra Police received nearly 18 lakh applications for 17,471 junior posts.

In Ankleshwar, Gujarat, headhunters from Thermax, a Pune-based engineering conglomerate, were in for a surprise. Close to 1,000 candidates had queued up to fill just 44 vacancies leading to a stampede-like situation in July.

Something similar was observed in Mumbai's Kalina when Air India Airport Services conducted a recruitment drive on July 16. More than 25,000 people showed up for 2,216 handyman positions, causing a near-stampede.

India's jobs conundrum is a complex, hydra-headed challenge. Not only are the country's youth desperate to get jobs, there are also questions of skills shortage, a fetish for sarkari jobs and policy bungling by successive governments that moved the focus away from manufacturing to services among other pain points.

Plugging the Hole

Union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of initiatives while presenting the 2024-25 Budget aimed at tackling issues of skilling and job generation. The schemes, with an outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore for a five-year period, qualify as an acknowledgment of the job crisis, but are not a single solution to the country's biggest issue.