Critics of reform gripe that five years of scorching growth failed to create as many jobs as it should have, but behind India's 'jobless growth' story there's a far more intriguing tale.
There are over a million vacancies for the country's most coveted jobs - employment in the Central government - and they're just not getting filled.
These include the police and defence forces, which together have nearly 700,000 vacant posts, valued for the security of tenure and reliable, inflation-linked pay and pension schemes that they offer.
But there are also several vacancies for skilled professionals such as doctors, scientists, statisticians and economists. These, if left vacant, could dent India's growth prospects in the near future.
The latest NSSO survey shows India's workforce grew by only 2 million between 2004-05 and 2009-10, inviting the charge that growth has bypassed the job market. The numbers would have looked 50% better if the government had filled those 1 million vacancies.
One reason for the failure to find the right people for the right job is a skill shortage. The lack of employable people is pushing the government, India's largest employer, towards an impending human resource crisis.
"Most ministries and departments are understaffed and despite efforts at hiring the rate of filling vacancies is not adequate. People with specialised knowledge are few and there are many other lucrative offers from the private sector," said a finance ministry official.
"We've focused on hiring people from the private sector on contract, but that too is difficult," he added.
India's higher education system is choking, unable to keep up with the numbers of aspirants. The quality of teaching is also falling. Meanwhile, the government sets unnecessarily high eligibility criteria for jobs that don't need very high skills, hierarchies are rigid and compared to the private sector, sarkari recruitment rules are a tangle of red tape.
And unlike the 1970s and 1980s, there's a vast private sector - and a global job market - more than willing to compete with the government to attract talent.
Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Defence Minister AK Antony, quizzed recently in Parliament about the government's failure to fill vacancies, have trotted out most of these reasons.
Santosh Mehrotra, director general of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research under the Planning Commission, feels the lack of skilled and employable people has developed into a national crisis. "The availability of adequately qualified people has become a crisis of national proportion."
"From low-end jobs to high-end jobs in sectors such as health, education and other services, there is a need for people and there are fundamental flaws in the way recruitment is done," he added.
For ministries and departments that require personnel with high technical and specialised skills, the problem extends to causes deeper than competition from the private sector.
"We see fewer people opting for statistics or mathematics for graduation. This leaves a limited pool for us to select from," said an official in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, which has around 1,200 vacancies for statistical investigators and collators.
There are over a million vacancies for the country's most coveted jobs - employment in the Central government - and they're just not getting filled.
These include the police and defence forces, which together have nearly 700,000 vacant posts, valued for the security of tenure and reliable, inflation-linked pay and pension schemes that they offer.
But there are also several vacancies for skilled professionals such as doctors, scientists, statisticians and economists. These, if left vacant, could dent India's growth prospects in the near future.
The latest NSSO survey shows India's workforce grew by only 2 million between 2004-05 and 2009-10, inviting the charge that growth has bypassed the job market. The numbers would have looked 50% better if the government had filled those 1 million vacancies.
One reason for the failure to find the right people for the right job is a skill shortage. The lack of employable people is pushing the government, India's largest employer, towards an impending human resource crisis.
"Most ministries and departments are understaffed and despite efforts at hiring the rate of filling vacancies is not adequate. People with specialised knowledge are few and there are many other lucrative offers from the private sector," said a finance ministry official.
"We've focused on hiring people from the private sector on contract, but that too is difficult," he added.
India's higher education system is choking, unable to keep up with the numbers of aspirants. The quality of teaching is also falling. Meanwhile, the government sets unnecessarily high eligibility criteria for jobs that don't need very high skills, hierarchies are rigid and compared to the private sector, sarkari recruitment rules are a tangle of red tape.
And unlike the 1970s and 1980s, there's a vast private sector - and a global job market - more than willing to compete with the government to attract talent.
Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Defence Minister AK Antony, quizzed recently in Parliament about the government's failure to fill vacancies, have trotted out most of these reasons.
Santosh Mehrotra, director general of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research under the Planning Commission, feels the lack of skilled and employable people has developed into a national crisis. "The availability of adequately qualified people has become a crisis of national proportion."
"From low-end jobs to high-end jobs in sectors such as health, education and other services, there is a need for people and there are fundamental flaws in the way recruitment is done," he added.
For ministries and departments that require personnel with high technical and specialised skills, the problem extends to causes deeper than competition from the private sector.
"We see fewer people opting for statistics or mathematics for graduation. This leaves a limited pool for us to select from," said an official in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, which has around 1,200 vacancies for statistical investigators and collators.
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