'Inconvenience caused is deeply regretted': Acid test of a govt job

“The posts have been cancelled due to administrative reasons. The inconvenience caused is deeply regretted....” reads the latest notice on the staff selection commission (SSC) website, informing Vasant Kumar and his friends of the cancellation of the five recruitment exams scheduled to be held in the coming month. 

Kumar, a 22-year-old ITI graduate hailing from Bihar, has been preparing for the past year to land a job as a drill operator in the Department of Water Resources. A fortnight ago, he was shocked at the notice, but not surprised.

“It’s nothing new. It’s good that it got cancelled so early. Otherwise, it would have gotten cancelled after all the formalities and that would have hurt more. I still have a few years left to try my luck. You see, getting a government job is not so easy,” he adds. 

What Kumar points out is an issue that students have been facing for decades.

Deferred exams, cancelled recruitment drives, delays in the declaration of results, and pending court cases are among the few hurdles students must cross to land their ‘dream’ jobs. 

However, not all are as hopeful as Kumar.

R Karthik Srinivasan, a 28-year-old, recalls that he missed out on the job as a technical operator in the central ground water board despite appearing for the skill test, way back in 2017, as the agency cancelled the recruitment process in 2019, citing administrative reasons. 

“The agency again advertised the posts a year later, along with some other new vacancies. I applied again, but a notice by SSC (the central recruitment body) in October last year informed me that the posts have been withdrawn by the user department, again citing administrative reasons. Well, that was the time I decided to move on and started working under a private contractor. Now, all my ITI degrees and skilling workshop certificates are worthless.”

In response to a question on the rising incidents of cancellation of examinations, paper leaks, and cheating in Lok Sabha last December, Union State Education Minister Annapurna Devi replied that education is a subject in the concurrent list of the Constitution.

“Thus, the matters relating to examinations in schools other than those that come under the central government are regulated in terms of rules and instructions of the respective examination boards of the state government concerned,” the minister said.    

While the queries sent to various recruitment boards regarding the number of such instances by Business Standard remain unanswered, millions of students continue to brave these uncertainties and remain hopeful of a better future.

But why?

Neil Bhatia, who teaches at one of the ‘coaching institutes’ in Northeast Delhi, says that even after having one of the technical degrees, there are few takers for their skills in the private sector. Most of the students obtaining technical degrees from the government skilling ecosystem come from marginalised communities and remote areas. They are also often weak in interpersonal skills.

“What they are left with are limited vacancies in public sector undertakings (PSUs) and other government projects. It is a vicious cycle. Since their training is limited, private companies steer clear of recruiting them. With the government firm on its commitment to disinvest, opportunities for these youths are going to be severely limited. The youth often end up giving up five to six years of their life in the hope of qualifying for these examinations,” says Bhatia.

“On the one hand, technical exams require some sort of training and certification. On the other, there are general clerical staff recruitment exams, where students from both the technical and non-technical backgrounds are eligible. The lure of government jobs with assured income and other benefits, along with limited job opportunities elsewhere, keep millions of candidates waiting for a few hundred vacancies. Students don’t shy from paying exorbitant bribes and using unfair means to pass these examinations,” adds Dhruv Rathore, an arithmetic tutor who runs his private coaching centre in West Delhi. 

The ‘infiltration’ of technical students into general clerical exams has also found resonance in Parliament in the recent past.

In 2020, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions informed Parliament in a written answer that in the Combined Graduate Level Examinations (CGLE) 2017, around 66 per cent of passed candidates had done technical courses like BTech, BSc, BPharm, Management, etc.    

“What is the use of spending lakhs on doing technical courses, when all you are going to get is a clerical job or get employed as a basic school teacher?” asks Vandita Verma, 27, who left her job in an educational technology company last year to appear in a Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers. The exam was cancelled later as scores of students were found using unfair means and around 50 were arrested.

“The main problem is that there is no specific law to deal with instances of cheating. The need of the hour is that the central government accept the criminal nature of such acts and bring in a stern law to deal explicitly with instances of cheating to protect the integrity of the recruitment system,” says Rathore.  

After several instances of paper leaks which came to light in the past few years, the Rajasthan government passed the Rajasthan Public Examination Act, 2022, which introduces stiffer penalties, including imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to ~10 crore, for cheating and impersonation in recruitment examinations.

Earlier, the Union government in the 2020-21 Budget had announced the setting up of the National Recruitment Agency as an independent, professional and specialist organisation for ~1,500 crore to conduct computer-based online Common Eligibility Test for recruitment to all non-gazetted posts. Three years later, the agency is yet to see the light of day.

“The government doesn’t want to confront reality. You are neither going to stop millions from applying to a few hundred jobs nor are you going to stop cheating, when the root cause is lack of jobs, especially jobs with social security. It is high time the government revises both the technical and non-technical curriculum, so that after spending thousands of rupees, students are not forced to appear for a clerical exam somewhere,” says a distraught Neil Bhatia. 

In the meantime, scores of students like Kumar and Srinivasan are forced to work for paltry wages under private contractors despite having requisite skill training certificates.

Harjeet Lamba, 48, who runs a motor mechanic workshop in Mayapuri in Delhi employs around 23 ‘helpers’, of which four are ITI graduates. 

“They don’t have any knowledge. I don’t need theory. I need to get my work done. Moreover, they demand more salary, since they have invested in certification. Why should I pay them extra, when all they know has been taught by me, instead they should give me a training fee,” chuckles Lamba.