North India struggles to cope with employment security

An Indian job advert for office tea boys and night guards in Uttar Pradesh has attracted over 2.3 million applicants, including highly qualified graduates, pointing out the desperation for job security shown by Indian youths. The overwhelming set of applications is the latest proof of the shrivelling employment prospects in the densely populated states of North India. Sources have said that it would take up to 4 years to hold interviews for the 368 junior posts advertised by the government, even if candidates were processed at 2000 a day. India struggles to provide employment even for the 12 million school leavers who enter the work force. Economists point their fingers at the country's restrictive labour laws which do not permit private employees to hire. Also to blame is the reservation system that prefers lower caste Indians. Fewer than a tenth of India's 500 million workers are employed in the formal sector, and half of those are employed in government or state-owned companies. Chairman of Oxus Investments, Surjit Bhalla said, “Everything you know is wrong with India is personified in that statistic... Both our labour laws and the fact that in a government job you do nothing and get paid a nice, healthy, fat wage. You can't be fired. You're there forever.”  Uttar Pradesh government said it wanted peons for the state assembly to be able to ride a bicycle and at least 5 years of education, but among the applications were 255 with doctorates and 25,000 with master's degrees. RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said this showed the need to create good and productive jobs. “The problem with government jobs is they have a high status in our society. They are also very stable, they provide medical benefits, they provide housing in some cases. So they look very attractive compared to private sector jobs. And typically at lower levels the government pays much more than the private sector.” He also added, “Business has to have the confidence that the environment will be hospitable to invest and create jobs... I don't think there is a short cut to that, we just have to move forward.”
This is not the first time Indian state employers have been swamped with applications. Last month, the Chhattisgarh state government cancelled an examination for 30 peon posts when it realised ti could not accommodate the 75,000 applicants. Uttar Pradesh officials say they may have to scrap the interview process to save time in selecting the lucky few who will be hired. “The problem is, if we start conducting interviews for all these candidates, it will take us three to four years to complete, even if we have 10 boards conducting those interviews,” said Prabhat Mittal, an administration secretary of the state government.
“We had not anticipated the situation. In 2006, for about 260 jobs we received 100,000 applications. But in nine years the figure has gone up so much. One reason is perhaps the easy access, because the government had distributed 1.5m laptops and people sitting in remote areas can apply at the click of a mouse. In 2006, applications were made offline.”