Unemployment explosion

Mubasir Raji *

Manipur Public Service Commission (MPSC) Building in Imphal in March 2013 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

An educated young man has to search for a job when he completes his study. While it may be normal practice everywhere, it is also a very normal thing that he gets his job most often than not but if that young man, we are talking about is a Manipuri residing in Manipur itself then he will (in normal cases) stop seeking the job sooner than later. The young man will feel discouraged because there is no job in the market. People will persuade him to stop useless hunt for the job.

What are the possible options available to an educated Manipuri youth? (In all fairness, uneducated one's also have little options available to them.) In normal practice, educated youth either go for government job or for private sector job. In the case of Manipur, it is a very small state and its economy is also comparatively smaller than the other states. As it is a small state, it has small administrative machinery. It is beyond the means of the state economy to churn out large number of jobs periodically to the educated youths.

In fact, there is no regular intake of jobs for different government departments; for last many years most of the government departments are taking bare minimum employees to it fold. Most of the intakes have been in the form of 'contracts' and 'part timers'.

The explanation is, the economy is already stretched and it can't be over burdened with new employees' intakes. Most of the departments got a small budgetary allocation; the lacks of funds compel them to stay static and not to expand. Most of the government colleges and schools are not increasing their academic and not academic staffs. As far as government school are concern, it is a very dodgy and controversial topic- because there are fewer students, controversial appointment of staffs, alleged mishandling of funds and appointment of candidates without the desired qualification for the concern post.

The current trends in Manipur say most of the parents are sending their children to private schools. So let's considers only the government colleges for the time being.

Most of the government colleges are functioning in a static manner. The number of staffs are neither increasing nor the infrastructures are improving. Although it is beyond doubt that the number students have increased manifold in recent years but the infrastructure have remain the same. So after acquiring degree, it is very difficult for a young man to enter the colleges as a teacher or as an administrative staff. The numbers of private colleges are few above it; they (private colleges) don't pay standards salary to their staff that is employees are underpaid.

There are no private universities in the state, except the two central universities and they are never going to be enough to absorb the students pass out from all the colleges of Manipur. So many students are going outside for higher studies. So our educated youth that we have taken as an example for consideration (that we have mention earlier) will be very lucky if he get to enter one of the two universities! Most of the departments in these universities take time to expand their faculties. If and when they do expand, the number will be limited to only one or two intake in the most cases.

The private sector undertaking (industries) is not flourishing in our state. Except for few small and medium scale enterprises, there is no multinational company. We are located in a very remote part; our connectivity with the outside world is limited to some two odds national highways. So the available employment opportunities are very limited.

Majority of people are still employed in agricultural and allied activities, here again even in agriculture sector, there is no large scale cash crop or commercial crop production. Traditional farming will not attract the educated youngsters; it generate only small amount of income and it is very difficult to meet both the ends with that income.

It is very likely that our young man will be tempted to run out of the state and seek for whatever job he finds outside. Yes there are number of privately owned schools in the state giving employment to the young people as teachers, who extracted heavy work and give low salary. Above it, not all people are temperamentally fit to be work as teacher.

The situation is as it is for last many years and it is expected to be so for next some years. If the situation continues for say, next ten years; there will be lot more desperate and unemployed youths. We will see 'unemployment population explosion'!

We should not forget that the state, Manipur is already embroiled in insurgency problem and the state have easy access to narcotic drugs. If we let lose the situation, the state may prove a fertile ground for unwanted elements.

Perhaps that is why we see a spade of lottery programs locally called "Housie" in recent time. We are not considering the merits and demerits of so called Housie at the moment. There were also the lure of many of the networking business which thugs people in many instances by promising heavy returns for the investment of certain amount.

The Manipur Public Service Commission is regularly inviting application for the different posts from the last few years, which is in fact giving a sigh of relief to drought like situation. Even though the intake may be only hundred or just fifty or may be even less than that, it is giving encouragement to the herds of hard working young people. The Manipur state Public Service Commission (MPSC) examination is once again making study look like sexy! Numbers of young people who are living outside the state are returning only to give this examination.

Again even the MPSC examination comes with a subtext to reflect upon. More than fifteen thousand candidates are fighting among themselves only for some hundreds of for fifty seats. One must not forget that majority of them are unemployed. It is not like, they are already employed and giving a shot just for the want of something bigger. One thing, these hard working youngsters are religiously studying.

The question is where these hard working youngsters will go after ten years? In all likelihood majority of them will not get what they are looking for. Their desperation will be very high since they have given great amount of hard work.

Coming back to our young man, if he clears MPSC examination, he will bean officer and will be an envy of everyone. If he fails, he will be just another guy among the scores of other losers. In fact there will be no dearth of losers like him by that time. Now he may consider becoming an auto-driver, if he didn't have the require capital even for that venture than he may perhaps decide to live by his wife earning. It is already a settle thing that he will be a hard drinker. Ask him, and he will answer even successful people drinks, there is no reason why he should not!