Lessons from another Agnipath track

The Railways' experience with its apprenticeship programme offers a sense of the problems that could occur with the new recruitment scheme of the armed forces

- SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE

In the din over the armed forces' Agnipath recruitment scheme, it is worth stepping back to study a fairly similar pattern that the Indian Railways (IR) has followed for its apprentice programme. The problems are similar - trained apprentices demand a full-time job, but IR is willing to offer, at the most, concessions in the admission test. As the job market shrinks, the level of stridency is rising here, too.

These controversies also go some way towards explaining why the private sector has been reluctant to jump on the apprenticeship bandwagon, despite successive governments asking it to do so. Explaining to trained cohorts that they should now carry their skills elsewhere in the job market is not easy in India. And the IR having undercut the system as a pioneer has not helped the conversation.

IR began offering apprenticeships to two categories of apprentices under the Apprentice Act of 1961. These were either fresh candidates or Industrial Training Institute (ITI)-qualified candidates; there were also technician apprentices, basically diploma-holders. The two schemes were modelled on the earlier apprentice scheme for graduate engineers that had been running since 1927. But there was one crucial difference with the latter. The Jamalpur boys, named after the location of the institute in Bihar, were Special Class Railway Apprentice officers and had a confirmed job offer from the day they became apprentices. Traditionally, these men have gone on to become the seniormost officers in IR. Those lower down, who came under the 1961 Act, had no such assurance.