Distressing statistics that reveal a sorry state of affairs in society should manifest our collective anxiety, if not consciousness. But sadly, because the nature of public memory is ephemeral and any concern of media is no less impermanent, the result is that it hardly succeeds beyond tickling a funny bone of the worried individual members of the society. Take for example the most recent shock we recently had, courtesy media reports regarding the astounding numbers nof applicants for a meager peon positions in the UP Secretariat. The figure is an unbelievable 23, 00, 000 applicants!
Decades ago when we were writing competitive examinations, our immediate concern would be to first explore the chances of our getting through in the light of mathematical revelations, which was the selection ratio, which used to be one to a few hundred in an average.
Then times changed. The ratio frog leaped to one post for maybe a thousand applicants. I took a calculator to check what the ratio in the peon recruitment case was. It came to a monstrous 6,250 applicants for every single post. A business daily rightly called it the height of unemployment in its caption.
But the underlying sarcasm in the media, which is always an elite body at least intellect wise, was that the posts were for peon positions.
The shocker, apart from the 23,00,000 applicant figure, were the huge numbers of highly qualified people applying for what is definitely underemployment for them. The categorisation of these over qualified applicants is the real blow: 255 PhDs, 24.969 post-graduates, 1.5 lakh graduates. Besides, there are engineers and science researchers etc among them.
By conventional standards, as per the eligibility for the above posts, any educational qualification beyond class five pass out level is over qualification, but then the 53,426 applicants with the exact qualifications requirement are bound to have restless nights in anticipation of the uncertainty, if not impossibility, of the probable chances of getting the jobs, should they actually get a chance to take a look at the monumental heap of paper applications kept in the store of some babu in the recruitment cell. There are also high school graduates and twelfth pass outs—needlessly to say—in lakhs, attempting to fill these vacancies with their over qualifications.
The insight into the whole peculiar, if not impecunious job situations, is not merely what it is termed out to be—the high unemployment rate. There are many factors responsible for it. Some of which are easy to guess. like the pitiable mindset of a few, which is the easy recruitment test for the posts, where with their higher and impressionable degrees, they hope to stand a much fair chance than if they would compete with their fellow ilk in areas where their qualifications better suit.
Then there is the salary factor. With the 7th Pay Commission recommendations in the coming year and its pay calculator suggesting a huge rise in pay for Government employees in all categories, even a class IV post is a better bet for many unemployable higher degree holders in private sectors. Not that all the graduates, post-graduates and the PhDs who have applied for the posts would be actually serious with their applications, for many it must be a stop-gap arrangement till they land in greener avenues; for many others it might be the fun part, a scathing derision of the mortifying socio-economic orders.
Back then in the 70s, a very senior colleague had employed a trick to shake the tail feather of social attention. In his unemployment days, he procured a rickshaw by hiring it and replaced the rickshaw puller by driving it himself for a couple of days, seeking out passengers for fun, with various signboards clipped on all its sides that read, “A Graduate Rickshaw-Walla”. Though he hardly got a willing passenger who would consciously like to offend the sensibility of an unemployed graduate simulating as a rickshaw puller, yet he succeeded in getting the attention of the local media and became the talk of the town and academic discussions, and he claimed that soon after he eventually landed on a job .
One hopes that the tricks of many an overqualified applicant who just want to stir up public concern for them work and they too eventually get the jobs they deserve, leaving the arena for their less privileged, less qualified applicants who have limited opportunities and scopes, and who then may get a fair selection ratio of one post for a hundred and fifty applicants. The serious ones should make this battle of jobs a fair game and try it with the minimum eligible qualification for the job and not fire the ammunition of bigger degrees to win, which, however, in any case, is not usually considered during selection.
(The writer is District Information and Public Relations Officer, Gajapati. All opinions are personal)