Unemployment, especially among the educated youth, is a very disturbing phenomenon of our society. The number of unemployed youth is increasing and with that discontent among this large segment of society is deepening. It has become a threatening situation and some observers are of view that one of the reasons for emergence of violent groups in the country that have taken to anti-state activities is unemployment. An idle man’s brain is devil’s workshop. So goes the saying.
The situation in our State is more alarming. The reason is that industries being the largest segment that provide employment to the skilled and non-skilled workers including educated youth are not developed in our State. We will not go into the reasons why industries have not developed as that is outside the purview of our response, but we find that it is only the Government in the State of Jammu and Kashmir that is the largest employer. Of course, we include Public Sector Undertakings and Government Departments into account. The trend in the State is that there is craze for Government jobs because of two important reasons. One that it is assured job and no employee’s service can be terminated unless there is a very big case against him. And secondly, the Government job carries the attraction of pensioner benefits after superannuation. However, this last mentioned facility has been cut down and now there is the alternative of provident fund.
But recruitment to Government jobs has always been a matter of great controversy. An overview of recruitment system has revealed many loopholes in it which have to be plugged. In the first place it has to be pointed out that the present system of recruitment for departmental vacancies is complicated, time consuming and very slow affecting the entire social structure adversely. According to an official statement there are 78,980 vacancies in various State Departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) including Gazetted, Non-Gazetted and Class IV. This is a very large number of vacancies and how much time will it take the Government to fill all of these is difficult to predict.
Why should have so many vacancies accumulated over time and why were not these filled so far is a question that is directly related to the unemployment phenomenon. Is not delaying of recruitment something very detrimental to the youth of the State and does it not prevent the utilization of potential in the larger interests of the people of the State? When recruitment to the existing vacancies is deferred indefinitely, it means that prospective candidates are losing the chance and at the same time they are advancing in age and many of them reach the age bar while waiting for the Government to initiate the process. In this way the purpose for which these schemes are floated is defeated to a large extent.
There are many bottlenecks in the recruitment system. A lot of time is wasted between identifying a vacancy, reporting the same to the PSC or the State Board of Recruitment, scrutiny by the recruiting agency, notification of the vacancy, receipt of applications and their scrutiny and then putting together the recruitment panel. This is a necessary process but it is very expensive and protracted process. Unless drastic reforms are introduced, the recruitment process will remain a bone of contention between the giver and the receiver.
We hope that there will be some realization at relevant level in the Government that filling of 79 thousand vacancies in shortest possible time would go a long way in providing source of livelihood to the deserving candidates and their families. This matter needs to be looked at from broader angle and not just from the viewpoint of providing likelihood to the incumbents. We should also take into account the factors like efficiency, delivery, speed and end result of the entire process of recruitment.
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