Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
Narendra Modi during his electoral campaign in 2014 had promised of creating 2 crore jobs every year. Image Source: IANS
The physical copies of the appointment letters to the new appointees will be handed over at 45 locations across the country
Prime Minister Narendra Modi distributed about 71,000 appointment letters to newly inducted recruits under the Rozgar Mela through video conferencing on November 22, 2022. According to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), appointment letters were handed over to 71,000 newly inducted recruits. During the programme, Modi also highlighted the importance of making nation self-reliant in all the sectors. Earlier in October 2022, 75,000 appointment letters were handed over to newly inducted appointees under Rozgar Mela.
Narendra Modi during his electoral campaign in 2014 had promised of creating 2 crore jobs every year. Also, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2022 budget speech had announced that the government will be creating 60 lakh jobs. India Tracker takes a look at the number of jobs created by the government in last eight years.
According to the Prime Minister's instructions, all Ministries and Departments are operating in Mission Mode to fill open positions against authorised positions. The new recruits, selected from across the country, will join 38 Ministries/Departments of the central government. The new appointees will join the government at various levels- Group A, Group B (Gazetted), Group B (Non-Gazetted) and Group C. The prime minister had earlier in June urged that 10 lakh individuals be hired on a "mission mode" by various government agencies over the next year and a half. The physical copies of the appointment letters to the new appointees will be handed over at 45 locations across the country. In addition to the categories of posts filled earlier, posts of teachers, lecturers, nurses, nursing officers, doctors, pharmacists, radiographers and other technical and paramedical posts are also being filled. A significant number of posts are being filled by the Ministry of Home Affairs in various Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF).
The Prime Minister also launched the Karmayogi Prarambh module, an online orientation programme for all new recruits in different government departments. According to PMO, it will include a code of conduct for government servants, workplace ethics & integrity, human resource policies and other benefits and allowances that will help them to get acclimatized to the policies and transition smoothly into the new roles.
This drive tends to help BJP in countering criticism over unemployment in these states. It is important to note that BJP came to power with the promise of providing two crore jobs every year. However, data shows a different story as the job creation by the central government has been lower than the promised figure. Forget achieving the target, the government has not been able to meet even 10 percent of it, as per their own records. The chart below shows the number of jobs created by the Modi government in the past eight years.
Source: Reply to Lok Sabha by Union Minister of state for Personnel Jitendra Singh
According to the Union Minister of State for Personnel, Jitendra Singh’ reply to the Lok Sabha in the monsoon session of 2022, over 22 crore aspirants had applied for the central government jobs in last eight years between 2014 and 2022. Out of the 22 crore applicants, only 7.22 lakh were successful in getting a government job. The year 2018-19 witnessed the lowest job creation by the central government as only 38,100 jobs were created. The following year witnessed the highest job creation in last eight years as 1,47,096 central government jobs were created in different ministries and departments of the central government. The highest number of job application were received in 2018-19 which witnessed the lowest job creation. Around 5,09,36,479 applications were received for jobs across various central government ministries and departments.
Thus, it is safe to say that Narendra Modi’s dream of creating 10 lakh jobs over the next 18 months seems to be a difficult one to achieve and more concrete steps are much needed for the creation of new jobs.
But it should also be noted that apart from the direct job creation for filling the positions in the ministries and departments of the central government, the Modi government has launched a number of schemes which offers employment opportunities to the youth. Make in India, Start-up India, Digital India, Smart City Mission, Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) and Atmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana (ABRY) are some of the schemes launched by the central government aimed at job creation.
