[ad_1]
On July 9, more than 1500 youth thronged Ankleshwar in Gujarat after learning about job opportunities in a private firm which had conducted walk-in interviews for 10 vacancies at a hotel. The rush of job seekers almost went out of control and the railing of a hotel broke due to the sheer pressure of applicants. Fortunately, a stampede-like situation was averted and a few applicants escaped with minor injuries.
A video of jostling among applicants to get inside the hotel went viral on social media, exposing the ground situation of employment in Gujarat, one of the most industrialised states with a large industrial base.
The main opposition Congress shared a video of the overcrowding and took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the “Gujarat model” over the incident.
Political turmoil
Congress said in an X post, “Narendra Modi’s Gujarat model. A huge crowd of unemployed people gathered in a hotel in Bharuch, Gujarat for jobs. The situation became such that the railing of the hotel broke and the Gujarat model was exposed. Narendra Modi is imposing this model of unemployment on the entire country.”
The incident in Ankleshwar, a hub of over 1,000 chemical and pharmaceutical factories, has exposed the government’s much-publicised claim that it is the state with the least number of unemployed and the highest number of job creators in India.
Certainly, Gujarat is one of the states with the lowest unemployment rate, ranking fourth from the bottom across all age groups for 2022-23. Labour and Employment Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya recently shared data on unemployment rates in India in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
The unemployment rate of Gujarat for the 15-29 years age group is 5.1% which is lower than Delhi’s 6.1%, Maharashtra’s 10.9%, Karnataka’s 8.5% and significantly lower than Andhra Pradesh’s 15.7%. For the 15-59 years age group, Gujarat’s unemployment rate is 1.8% which is lower than Delhi’s 2%, Maharashtra’s 3.4%, Karnataka’s 2.6% and Andhra Pradesh’s 4.4%.
Last year, the state government presented data about the unemployed youth registered in various districts in the state assembly. According to it, a total of 2.38 lakh educated youth are unemployed in Gujarat and have registered themselves for employment in various government departments.
Responding to questions raised by Congress MLAs in the Assembly in 2023, the state government said that in the last two years, 2,38,978 educated unemployed have registered in 29 districts and 10,757 partially educated unemployed have also registered, taking the number of educated unemployed to 2,49,735.
Despite claims and counter-claims, the supply of jobs in Gujarat is not matching the demand. Take the diamond sector of Surat, for example. Recently, the Diamond Workers Union launched a helpline for those facing job-related stress. “Within 24 hours of launching the helpline, we received over 400 distressed calls from diamond workers,” said Bhavesh Tank, the union’s president for Surat city.
He said the main concerns of the callers were unemployment, rising cost of living and depression due to financial constraints and job uncertainty.
Mr Tank said more than 60 diamond workers had committed suicide in the last 18 months due to job loss or financial crisis.
In December 2023, the Gujarat Subordinate Services Selection Board had received an overwhelming response of over one lakh applicants competing for around 2,500 technical posts in various departments.
The posts notified included miscellaneous posts such as Sterilizer Technician, Graphic Designer, Machine Supervisor, Land Surveyor, Junior Process Assistant, etc.
‘No service area’
“In Gujarat, it is a unique situation. On one hand, there are low-level jobs like security guards, drivers, supervisors, etc. but native Gujaratis are not interested in them. So most of them are filled by migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. Even at industrial sites like Kandla Port, Aland Ship Dismantling Yard, Dahej or Vapi industrial sites, the daily wage workers are mostly migrants. For locals, they either want government jobs or high-paying jobs which are not available in the market as the service sector is still developing here,” said a government official.
The lack of decent jobs is also reflected in the fact that a large number of Gujarati youth want to go abroad, even illegally, as was evident when a flight full of illegal immigrants from France to Mumbai was intercepted.
According to another official, Gujarat initially did not focus on developing service sectors like IT and focused mostly on industrialisation, which helped a lot in job creation, but now industrial jobs are stagnant and wages have not increased due to overall slowdown in factories.
[ad_2]
Source link