THE HINDU EDITORIAL- MARCH 28, 2022
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Lotus pose Yogi Adityanath is now central to the
BJP’s political ambitions for the whole country Yogi Adityanath has become the first
Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh to be sworn in for a second successive term
after having completed a full give-year term. Among the 52 others who took
oath with Mr. Adityanath on March 25 were Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh
Pathak who are deputy Chief Ministers. The composition of the Council of
Ministers signifies the continuing efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) to balance the claims of various caste groups within the Hindutva
umbrella. Several new faces have been added and several others dropped, to
infuse the new Ministry with fresh energy and optics. As many as 22 Ministers
from the previous term were removed, of whom 11 had lost the elections. Upper
castes have got a lion’s share of the berths – 21 of the 52, with the
Brahmins and Rajputs in particular, who got seven each. These communities
rallied behind the BJP like never before in 2022, forming the core of the
Party’s social base. Non-Yadav OBSs that largely stayed with BJP have also
been rewarded, though to a lesser extent. Dalit support for the BJP has been
acknowledged, with nine of them making it to the Council. The BJP has finally
made a serious attempt at wooing the Muslim vote bank by including Danish
Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda or backward Muslim. Rising through the ranks of the
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, he has been working on the ground to create
a connection between Muslims and the BJP.
The BJP hopes that the distribution of power among various social
groups effected through the Council’s composition will stand it in good stead
ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The criticality of U.P. in its national
plan cannot be overstated – it contributes 20% of the party’s current
strength in the Lok Sabha. The party will do everything to keep its U.P.
house in order. The central leadership of the BJP had a significant say in
the selection of Ministers, But a balancing has been sought with the Chief
Minister’s views. Mr. Adityanath has emerged as a leader of his own standing
through his first term and this election victory. Controversial as it is, his
aggressive style and steamrolling administrative tactics have won him
tremendous popularity. He has become a new icon of BJP politics. For good reasons,
the 49-year-old is being seen as a potential successor to Mr. Modi who is 71.
He is likely to fashion his second term with that view firmly in mind. India’s
most populous State is also a severely underdeveloped one. His governance in
U.P. can influence the course of the country. Mr. Adityanath’s second term in
U.P. will, therefore, be watched beyond the State, and around the world. Talking and
listening India and China will find it difficult
to simply pick up the threads of their conversation Brief as it was, Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Delhi on Friday appears to have left behind more
questions than answers on its purpose. The visit was a first by a senior
Chinese official since the military standoff along the LAC began in April
2020. Since then, despite 15 rounds of border commander talks and eight
rounds of meetings of the special Working Mechanism for Consultation and
Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), friction areas remain –
including Patrol Point (PP) 15, Demchok and Depsang – where troops have been
amassed on both sides. However, it appeared that during his meetings,
separately with NSA Ajit Doval, followed by External Affairs Minister S.
Jaishankar, Mr. Wang proposed no new mechanism or formulation to break the
logjam in those talks, as had been the case earlier. Instead, the Chinese
side only repeated that India must put the differences on the border issue “in
the proper place in bilateral relations”, and revive bilateral talks on all
issues. The suggestion was part of a three-step formula, according to a
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement that included taking a
long-term, ‘civilizational’ view of India-China ties, seeing each others’
development as a “win-win” and cooperating at multilateral sphere. The last
point was a reference to China’s turn to host the BRICS summit later this
year, which Mr. Wang hoped Prime Minister Modi would attend, and India’s turn
to host the SCO and G-20 summits next year, where Chinese President Xi
Jinping would be among the invitees.
However, neither Mr. Wang nor his hosts in the Government answered
why, if his message did not differ from the past, he was received in Delhi at
all. That he was merely in the region – visiting Pakistan for an OIC
conference; Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban ahead of another conference
in Beijing, and Nepal to further bilateral cooperation and infrastructure
projects – and decided to “drop in” does not seem to suffice as a reason,
when bilateral ties remain at a standstill. Nor does it explain why the Modi
government, which has consistently said it would only hold bilateral talks
about resolving the border standoff, departed from this precept to discuss
bilateral and international issues. Neither side announced Mr. Wang’s arrival
until the first meetings on Friday, indicating that there is something more
behind the scenes. It is also possible that his outreach stems from a desire
to compare notes on Ukraine, where India and China find themselves at odds
with the western sanctions regime that threatens to isolate Russia and split
global transactions into a “dollar vs non-dollar” system, while also finding
themselves not entirely comfortable with Mr. Putin’s actions. Regardless of
any common understanding on other issues, however, it is clear that New Delhi
and Beijing cannot simply pick up the threads of their conversation until
there is a full understanding of events since April disengagement of troops,
is completed. |
The era of an unemployed India There are many indices of proof that
seriously contradict the tall claims of employment generation in India MAYA JOHN Reports on and the visuals of the
recent agitations by railway job applicants reveal a widespread problem of
massive job insecurity among India’s youth. Alarming figures of unemployment have
been recurrent even before the huge dislocation unleashed by lockdowns
imposed in 2020-21 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much before the
pandemic, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) reported a 6.1%
unemployment rate in 2017-18, the worst in over four decades. The picture has
proved more dismal in the ensuing months since April-May of 2020.
For instance, in December 2021, the Centre for Monitoring Indian
Economy (CMIE) estimated that nearly 53 million Indians were unemployed, a
large proportion of whom were women. The unemployment rate was hovering at
7.91% in December 2021, and though there has been some talk of a dip in unemployment
in January 2022, the figure still stands at a worrying 6.57%. Exposing claims Percentages and data spun out by
governmental agencies and policy think-tanks are open to contestation, but
there are other indices of proof that seriously contradict the tall claims of
employment generation. One such index is the downward pressure unleashed by
the influx of overqualified youth aspiring for middle and lower rung
government jobs, which, despite their modest pay, are highly coveted given
the greater job security ascribed to them.
Expectedly then, having advertised over 35,000 posts, the Railway
Recruitment Board was swamped with over 1.25 crore applications; a significant
proportion of which were postgraduate degree holders. This created massive
insecurity among a section of candidates who met the minimum eligibility but
were being forced to compete with candidates having higher educational
credentials.
With government jobs being limited, and reducing in number due to the
contractualisation and outsourcing of several substantive posts, intense
competition persists across various categories of jobs; a point brought to
light yet again by the recent Railways’ recruitment controversy. As clarified
by the Railway Recruitment Board and Union Railway Minister, for the second
stage of testing that stoked protests, the huge number of aspirants for
lowest rights up to the highest level of jobs advertised, eventually
compelled the authorities to shortlist 20 times the number of candidates for
all levels. Explaining the
scramble Shockingly, advertisements for even a
handful of lower rung government jobs attract an overwhelming number of
applications, leading at times to the withdrawal of such advertisements. In September
2021, news reports highlighted that among 18,000 applicants for some 42 posts
(peon, gardener and cook) in the Himachal Pradesh secretariat, there were
hundreds of doctorate and other postgraduate applicants. Earlier, in March
2021, more than 27,000 candidates with degrees such as BA, BSc, MA, MSc,
MCom, MBA, engineering, etc. had applied for 13 positions for a peon’s job in
the Panipat district court. Likewise, for 62 posts of messengers in the Uttar
Pradesh police, in August 2018, there were a total of 93,000 applicants;
3,700 were PhD holders and 50,000 were graduates, This particular job vacancy
required an education level of Class V and the selection criterion comprised
a self-declaration that the candidate knew how to ride a bicycle.
The desperate scramble for government jobs stems in no uncertain terms
from the high job insecurity (easy hire and fire), poor basic pay, and long
hours of work that characterize the bulk of jobs in the private sector.
Historically, only a small number of employer-employee work relations in
India - associated mostly with the formal sector – have been subject to state
regulation. However, in recent decades, there has been a steady decline of
state regulation of labour-capital relations in the formal sector. This
deregulation has been coupled with a concerted push toward rapid
privatization of the public sector. Together, these developments have
contributed significantly to periodic unemployment among both skilled and
less skilled workforces, in addition to reducing avenues of gainful
employment for new entrants in the job market. A spillover
effect The ramifications of this overall
process are multifold. At one level, enhanced deregulation of
employer-employee work relations in the formal sector has triggered periodic
unemployment of higher skilled workers, who have been spilling over into and
crowding lower-skilled, informal sector jobs. Likewise, the spillover effect
of periodic unemployment within middle-rung and higher-rung professional jobs
in India’s job market has pushed more qualified youth to crowd lower rung
government jobs.
This tendency itself has rendered a deep crisis for those with lower
educational qualifications who strive for the more modest government jobs,
and for whom such employment has traditionally been envisaged.
Reduced expenditure by the
state on health, education and the social sector as a whole has also ensured
inadequate employment generations, despite the fact that the demand for ‘public
goods’ has been growing exponentially. For a country with growing educational
needs, especially with large numbers seeking to escape inherited poverty
through avenues opened up by education, the marked shortage of government
schools and public-funded universities is alarming to say the least.
A closer look at the higher education sector itself reveals a steady
increase in the number of student applicants. The scenario naturally calls
for many more job recruitments of qualified teachers through the creation of
new public-funded Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) and an expansion of
existing ones. However, successive governments continue to restrict and even
delay recruitment of teachers to existing public-funded HEIs. For examply, in
a large public-funded university such as the University of Delhi, a
recruitment crisis has intensified over the years with over 4,500 teaching
posts being filled by ad hoc teachers and appointments to permanent positions
being stalled repeatedly. Antinomy of
eligibility This recruitment crisis is also the
result of an inexplicable delay in the grant of the second tranche of
teaching positions that was to accompany institutional expansion in the wake
of implementation of reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBSs). A recipe
for a complete disaster continues to unfold in such universities as a large,
highly skilled workforce of serving teachers defensively holds on to insecure
temporary job contracts as more eligible fresh candidates enter job market.
One of the contentious consequences of such heightened competitions has been
the enforcement of higher and higher qualifications for entry-level teaching
jobs in public-funded HEIs.
In this way, another index of mounting job insecurity and unemployment
is the arbitrary enhancement of educational qualifications stipulated for
recruitment into better-paid government jobs, as well as new criteria for admission
into professional training institutions. This tendency has not only
manifested itself in public-funded HEIs wherein entry-level teaching positions
now mandatorily require a PhD degree in addition to a Master’s degree and
UGC-NET qualification. It is also evident in the barrage of common entrance
tests for highly sought-after educational degrees such as in medicine
(National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, or NEET), as well as centralized eligibility
tests for recruitment into jobs such as school teaching (Central Teacher
Eligibility Test, or CETET). As the number of seats and vacancies fail to be
augmented, we see a systematic effort to ruthlessly eliminate a growing
number of aspirants using astute tests and arbitrary criteria.
In the backdrop of a large number of skilled and overqualified people languishing
in the throes of unemployment, the shrill rhetoric of ‘skill India’ rings
hollow. We will see more instances of frustration and agitations by the youth
in response to rampant unemployment. For the scores of educated aspiring
youth, transcending the prevailing logic of the economy is a crucial starting
point for envisaging a world free of unemployment. As economy that creates
fewer jobs is one which overworks some while rendering large numbers
unemployed. A tired India and an unemployed India are simply two sides to the
same coin. The youth realise that their access to the basics – education,
health and livelihood –depends on their desperate search for dignified
employment. A transformation of circumstances awaits newer sensibilities and
a sense of solidarities. Poverty rose but
income inequality fell There are signs that this pandemic has
not followed the usual script – of the poor bearing the brunt of the pain ANUP MALANI,
ARPIT GUPTA & BARTEK WODA COVID-19 had upended Indian society.
Over two-thirds of the country has been infected by COVID-19 and perhaps five
million or so people have died, directly or indirectly, from the pandemic.
The economy too has taken a beating. Even though there has been a V-shaped recovery,
output remains about 19% lower than 2019.
In macroeconomic crises, including the oil shock of 1990-91 or the
global liquidity crisis of 2007-08, many expect the poor to bear the brunt of
the pain. They are the most vulnerable, without contractual protections and
adequate safety nets. But there are signs that this pandemic has not followed
that script.
Poverty certainly rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined
monthly data from nearly 2,00,000 households with a total of one million
members from the Consumer Pyramids Household survey through 2021. We found that extreme poverty, defined
by the World Bank as the percentage of the population with an income below
$1.90, rose from 7.6% in November 2019 to 11.7% in July 2021. Income inequality However, income inequality actually
fell. In 2019, the average monthly income of households in the top 25% and
bottom 25% of the income distribution was approximately 45,999 rupees and
8,000 rupees, respectively, in urban areas, and 22,500 rupees and 7,500
rupees, respectively, in rural areas. While the average monthly income of the
top quartile in urban areas fell almost 30%, to 32,500 rupees by July 2021,
the monthly income of the bottom quartile in July 2021 remained at pre-pandemic
levels. In rural areas, the top quartile income fell by perhaps 20%, while
the bottom quartile income grew slightly during the same period. The result
is that inequality, measured as the percentage change in the income of the
top quartile minus the income in the bottom quartile, fell by 15-20
percentage points. This is holds saw larger drops in income all along the
income scale, in rural and urban areas, within each State, and even within
caste groups.
This remarkable finding is not unprecedented. Historians observed the
same dynamic during the plague in 14the century Europe. Given how much the
world economy has changed since then, however, the explanations for India’s
experience will differ. Three sources of
income To learn why inequality fell during
the pandemic, we examined three sources of household income: government
transfers, business profits and labour income. Government transfers are cash
or in-kind payments. Profits may be from any business, be it a food cart, a
farm, or a manufacturing plant. Labour income is wages earned from hourly
work or employment contracts.
Government payments to the poor cannot explain the decline in
inequality. To be sure, income support was not insubstantial. Households
received roughly 400 rupees per month in urban areas and nearly 500 rupees
per month in rural areas during the lockdown and Delta wave. They received
roughly half that much during the rest of the pandemic. However, even when government
transfers were netted out from income, income inequality fell by over 20%
points by July 2021.
Business profits play a bigger role than transfers. The rich saw a
larger decline in business income and depended more on that income than the
poor. While just 7% of a bottom quartile household’s income is from a
business, nearly 15% of a top quartile’s household’s income is from a
business. Unlike labour income, business income is volatile because it is
susceptible to changes in demand, and thus to aggregate income. We find that
business income of the top quartile is four times more sensitive to the aggregate
performance of the economy than the business income of the bottom quartile.
Given the large negative effect of COVID-19 on the economy, this suggests
that some of the disproportionate losses of the rich operate through business
income.
Labour income, however, plays a critical role (Table). Labour income
is just over 65% and 80% of the income of the top 25% and bottom 25% of
households. These are larger shares than those of government transfers or
business profits. To explain the decline in labour income, we looked at
supply-side explanations.
Looking at supply, one might suspect the rich chose to work less than
the poor, perhaps out of fear of contracting COVID-19. That was also our
conjecture, but it proved wrong. When the economy contracted, people lost
jobs and income. They tried to compensate by finding alternate work,
sometimes even in other occupations. While this seems a natural response for
the bottom 25%, it was even more true for the top 25%. While the minimum
amount that the poor were willing to accept to take a job fell roughly 40%,
the minimum amount fell more than 45% for the rich. Demand for labour The better explanation for the
disproportionate loss of labour income among the top quartile households is
that demand for their labour fell more. The rich tend to work in the service,
and demand for services fell more than demand for other sectors. While 30% of
workers in bottom quartile households work in the service sector, 45% of
workers from the top quartile households do. During the pandemic, consumer
spending on services fell by 30%-40%, far more than the decline in spending
on manufacturing or agriculture.
The situation was reversed in manufacturing. That sector employs a
larger share of bottom quartile workers than top quartile ones: 35% versus
15%. But manufacturing declined less than 20% during the pandemic. The
progressive contraction of demand for services swamped the regressive
contraction of demand for manufacturing.
To be clear, our analysis does not suggest that the pandemic was good
for the Indian economy. The loss of life and rise in poverty make it one of
the larger disasters the country has borne. The reduction in inequality would
be a silver lining if it were accomplished by lowering poverty rather than
reducing the income of the rich.
Nevertheless, by understanding the decline in inequality during the
pandemic we can assess prospects for inequality after it ends. Once demand
for services rises, along with aggregate income, both demand for the labour
of the rich and the business income of that group will likely return. There
is a risk that inequality will return to pre-pandemic levels. |
