Once the hurly-burly of election is over, lawmakers need to focus on nation development. There’s a lot to be done
The next lok Sabha is about to be constituted, shortly. The shrill campaign of claims and counterclaims, of agendas and non-agendas, of invectives, allegations and counter-allegations, of 2002 and 1984, of minorities and secularism and more will, hopefully, be over and the serious work of national development will take centre-stage.
These are seminal times. Hopefully with election rhetoric dying down, the name calling will stop and the acrimony put behind. The campaign period has seen some of the worst disasters in the defence wing and some unprecedented responses to it. Clearly, there is something is not quite right with our body-politic and decision making machinery. That we still coast along may be a saving grace but that cannot be taken as a core guarantee against future bungling.
There was a time when people talked of the unemployed and unemployable. In the times that are at hand, one is faced with a situation wherein there is the unemployed, unemployable and the ‘counter-employable’.
A quick word in explanation will help. ‘Counter-employable’ is a person who occupies a position but not only does he or she not know how to do the job but in fact does it with such counter-skills that it disrupts the workflow. The counter-employed have little or no familiarity of the skills and capacities required for the job. They are perhaps not even trainable as the precursor skills needed for absorbing training are missing.
Such people are found at all levels — from the lower management to the executive. They got the job because of perceived shortages in the recruitment pool or at best an approximation to what the approving authority thought was the skills required. They got in because of contacts, they got in because of strange exchange of favours or obligations but not because they deserved to be recruited.
A flight from Delhi to Jammu will need to get diverted because of bad weather. The nearest airport is Amritsar but the plane will have to fly back to Delhi because the flight plan to Amritsar was not available! Departure will be delayed because the reconciliation of weights before take-off has several manual calculation errors. The list can be longer.
References can be made to people not providing information on time, giving incomplete information, or doing so in a format which is not usable. The inventory of blocks to performance grows. Pointing this out raises strong emotions and resentment. To have a trouble-free environment, those who see this situation, are just supposed to grin and accept it.
In an era where every organisation has to earn its revenue for meeting its expenses (and more), it is not surprising that many are showing huge business losses. This cannot be attributed to difficult economic conditions alone.
If letters don’t get delivered, bills are not available on time, receipts are inaccurate not to talk of badly done menial jobs resulting in poor hygiene, the nation clearly needs a wake-up call. Political patronage, within or outside the organisation, cannot be stretched to cover inefficiencies, lack of skills and more. This will result in eroded capacity development and, therefore, limited capacity to stay afloat.
There are other dangers. The resources available, even with whatever growth the nation has experienced, fall short of the demands they are supposed to meet. Admission to schools is a nightmare. Hospitals are bursting at their seams. The number of people who apply for one job is often in hundreds, if not thousands. Reservations are not available for long-distance travel and shuttle service for local travel can be a melee. Roads are clogged with vehicles. The list is no discovery.
It’s about time right sizing population was put on the map, squarely and firmly. Increasing population will lead to a deluge which will not confine itself to the state of elevators during peak hours — in a metaphorical way of speaking. In other words, capacity building requires strong advocacy of basic public causes.
Talk of preservation of the environment will remain a fad unless demographic elements are put on top of the developmental agenda. The 16th lok Sabha is keenly awaited.