Agnipath, mass recruitment drive reflect Modi government’s commitment to job creation

The Indian Army

The monsoon may be delayed but the Narendra Modi government has promised it will be raining jobs soon. In a big bang announcement, the Prime Minister’s Office said, following a review of human resources, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed all Union government departments and ministries to recruit 1 million people on a “mission mode” in the next year-and-a-half.

In a parallel development, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rolled out Agnipath — a scheme for short service commission in the armed forces — that is expected to provide employment to over 40,000 youth in a year.

It has been pointed out that the Modi government came with the promise of creating over 20 million jobs per year. While statistics on employment are debatable (especially with a large section of the workforce engaged in the unorganised sector), there is no denying that the actual rate of employment generation has been woefully short of targets. This was partly on account of slower economic growth later compounded with the impact of the pandemic. Although the economy is beginning to look up, the COVID-19 overhang remains, and the global inflation triggered by supply chain disruptions due to the Ukraine crisis has pushed up the alarm indicator towards danger mark.

A particular area of worry has been the growing restiveness among educated youth as evidenced during recruitment drives in some states. The Opposition has been increasingly strident in its criticism of the government on the problem of jobs. Though the issue did not gain much traction during the last round of assembly elections, of late it has begun to resonate with the people.

Thus, at first glance these might appear as ad-hoc actions to pre-empt incipient discontent, and prevent a political backlash in the next tranche of state elections, which if unchecked could have a cascading effect on the Lok Sabha polls of 2024. Some see this as another instance of too little, too late. The government informed Parliament earlier this year there were 8.72 lakh vacant posts in the Union government departments as on March 1, 2020. Then why the delay in hiring? However, a closer examination suggests it might have been part of a calibrated approach that has been the hallmark of the Modi administration’s economic management since the beginning.

Delaying recruitments is a legitimate and proven human resource strategy for not only saving manpower cost but also stretching and testing the productivity of the system. The Modi government’s stated policy had been to cut inefficiencies and waste in government departments. For that, keeping a check on headcount is a key action area. This should have ideally been accompanied by a manpower audit. One is not sure if that was carried out — but nevertheless postponing recruitments would have yielded substantial savings — which would have enabled the government to pay for dearness allowance and other arrears even during a financial crisis, which would have helped not just the employees but also the economy by supporting consumption expenditure.

In the first phase of COVID-19, the government’s focus was on food security and welfare schemes operated under Direct Benefit Transfer. This kept the rural economy floating even in the direst time and, in hindsight, is acknowledged as a far more prudent way of handling the crisis than printing money as many countries did. In the second wave, the priority was vaccination. Disregarding lobbies of foreign vaccine manufacturers and doomsday prophets, the Modi government showed exceptional conviction of staying with ‘Made in India’ vaccines to carry out the largest vaccination programme in the world. The financial savings on that has not yet been highlighted, but savings on discretionary recruitment during a period of low economic activity would have also helped the exchequer.

Now having managed the supply side it is time to turn to demand creation. Jobs will ultimately have to be generated in the private sector — across manufacturing and services. However, that does not happen overnight, especially during a global economic downturn. Infrastructure provides immediate jobs in construction but its multiplier effect takes time to yield.

In such a situation, government jobs are a low hanging fruit. But, care has to be taken to see that only productive jobs are filled, and the cost of governance is not bloated with an idle workforce that will act as a dead weight in the long run. There lies the importance of schemes such as Agnipath. Because, ultimately it is all about ‘capacity creation’ of the nation.

Sandip Ghose is a current affairs commentator. Twitter: @SandipGhose. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.