The die is cast: How shrinking of CPSE jobs has changed the reservation mix

Some segments have gained greater share amid a drop in overall employment

The drop in the number of jobs in government companies has also changed the caste profile of its employees.

The total share of reserved category jobs has increased by 350 basis points over a five-year period, shows a Business Standard analysis of data from the Public Enterprises Survey reports between 2016-17 and the latest available 2021-22 report. A 100 basis points is one per cent. Much of the gains in reservation is due to gains for the Other Backward Class (OBC) community. Their share has gone up by 390 basis points.  It is up 90 basis points for Scheduled Tribe (ST) employees and has declined 130 basis points for Scheduled Caste (SC) members (chart 1).

 

This does not mean, however, that there are more jobs created for reserved candidates over this five-year period. The total number of reserved category jobs is down by 106,814 between 2016-17 and 2021-22. This marks a 20 per cent decline over the five-year period. Around 290,516 government company jobs across categories have disappeared over this period, a 26 per cent decline. The sharper decline in overall jobs has resulted in the share of reserved category jobs in the total.

The debate around reservation has gained currency in light of the Caste Census of Bihar, 2023 which was released earlier this week.  This has also sparked questions over reservations in line with the caste metric in educational institutions and at places of employment.

The shrinking jobs in central public sector enterprises show some variance depending on employee levels. Managerial and executive positions across SC, ST and OBC segments have seen an increase of 6,246 jobs over the five-year period. This means that there has been an 8.4 percentage point increase in reserved category manager and executive positions since 2016-17. Lower level supervisors, however, have seen their numbers decline by nearly 10 per cent (chart 2).

 

A similar difference seems to have played out among skilled and unskilled workers. Skilled workers have seen their share increase by 13.5 percentage points in the period under consideration. It has fallen 16.7 percentage points for unskilled workers. This has also held true across the SC, ST and OBC segments. Each of them has seen unskilled workers lose ground even as skilled worker share has increased (chart 3).

 

Migration is one route to economic gains. But caste considerations can play a role in that effort as well.

A person from the general category is more likely to migrate, according to an analysis from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad associate professor of economics Chinmay Tumbe.

The share of migrants whose last place of residence was Bihar was 25.3 per cent compared to their 15.5 per cent share in Bihar’s population, shows data from the National Sample Survey (NSS), 2007-08, 64th round on migration. The OBC community which accounts for 63.1 per cent of Bihar’s population account for 54 per cent of Bihar migrants.

The difference is sharper if one considers male migrants. Around 41.5 per cent of male migrants from Bihar are from the general category. It is 39.8 per cent for the OBC community (chart 4).

 

The trend can change across states since some states have more migrants coming in than going out, according to Tumbe. Financial and other networks help upper caste (UC) migrants have a greater propensity for migration, his work suggests.

“Longer duration longer distance migrations, UC migration propensities more in India overall at the household level. In shorter-distance, shorter-duration migration, the reverse,” he explained in an email response to a query from Business Standard.

There can be an urban-rural divide in the positive effect of reservations, according to the 2019 study ‘Affirmative Action in Government Jobs in India: Did the Job Reservation Policy Benefit Disadvantaged Groups?’ from authors Deepak Kumar, Bhanu Pratap and Archana Aggarwal.

“…even at low levels of education completion, the benefits of reservation for reserved categories in government jobs are higher in urban India than in rural India. This difference in benefits derived from the policy of job reservation may be due to the better informational and educational opportunities for these disadvantaged groups in urban areas than in rural areas of India,” it said.

The majority of the population in Bihar is rural.

The CPSEs now have the majority of its employees from the reserved category despite the changing mix. The reserved category accounted for 46.74 per cent of the employees in 2016-17. It was 50.2 per cent in 2021-22.