MP: No job, only announcements for youths in Shiv-raj, reveals data

Every six months, Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan would make announcements about providing employment to the youth. This is like rubbing salt in the wounds of the unemployed in the state.

There is a reason for such an observation. In the first week of March, Sports and Youth Welfare Minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia, in a written reply to a question by Congress MLA, Mevaram Jatav, in the Assembly said that the number of unemployed in the state was 39 lakh, whereas 21 people got government jobs during the last three years.

Last year in the monsoon session, the Assembly was informed that till April 1, the number of unemployed youth in the state was 25.8 lakh.

According to the Madhya Pradesh Employment Portal, currently, there are 38,86,455 youths seeking jobs there. Out of these, there are 12,24,432 youths who have registered with the employment offices in the last year. One of them, Mithun Ahirwar of Bhopal, says, “When the government itself accepts that jobs are not being given, then it’s not hard to guess how dark is the future of the youth in the state.

Even in the budget proposals presented in the Assembly on March 1, the government announced giving one lakh government jobs to the youth. But the speed of appointments reveals what is going to happen.

Chief Minister Chouhan, ostensibly ‘distressed’ with the unavailability of employment opportunities for the youth and job losses during the Corona-hit period, had announced in January 2022 to organize an employment fair in every district under the 'Udyam Kranti Yojana' for self-employment. The scheme was launched on April 5, 2022. It aimed at providing employment to one lakh people in a year.

However, a year later, till March 2023, even the rules for this could not be finalized. Reflecting on such situations, Ranjit Kisanvanshi, a member of the core committee of the National Executive of the National Educated Youth Union New, says that the government is making fake announcements. On the ground, there are no jobs. Even the candidates having passed recruitment examinations are getting police lathis on agitation for the appointment.

Sunil Saraswat and Dr. G R Rathore of the Yashwantrao Chavan Institute of Social Science Studies and Research, affiliated to Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune, published a report on their study conducted in Gwalior in the November 2022 issue of the Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research.

According to them, they chose Gwalior for the study as the number of unemployed youths registered in this district was three times the average of unemployed youths in other districts of Madhya Pradesh – 51,967 youth in 2021 against average for other districts being 17,233. Another reason was its importance as the home turf of the Union Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia.

According to researchers, lack of opportunities, poor communication skills, mismatch between available jobs and skills as well as disdain for private sector jobs are reasons for high unemployment in this region. Recently, 11,000 unemployed youths applied for 15 posts of peon, driver and watchman there. In these circumstances, the youth are naturally bound to face economic hardships leading to problems like delay in marriages and feeling of social isolation.

The problem, however, prevails across the state. Vaibhav Khandelwal (assumed name) of Indore told that his 32-years old unemployed son had completed his MBA from Mumbai and got a job for Rs. 17,000 per month. But during the Corona pandemic-hit period, his job was gone. Because of this, the boy became a victim of depression and started taking drugs. Now, he is repaying his son’s study loan taken from a bank.

The problem has another facet for girls. They are not getting married for want of employed matches. Also, the boys are looking for girls with a job. However, girls even with medical, engineering, business management degrees are not getting suitable jobs.

The case of Raju of Betul is an eye-opener. Raju, an IITian, had a good job in a big company in Mumbai. His job was gone during the Corona pandemic. His wife too doesn’t have a job and this has resulted in domestic discord. Family members feel that the situation wouldn’t have arisen if one of them had a job.

Leader of Opposition in the state legislature, Dr. Govind Singh, says that the parents spend lakhs of rupees to make their sons competent enough to get a job and become a supporting hand in their old age, but lack of employment is forcing the youth to commit suicide. This statement may appear like political rhetoric, but there are real incidents to support his view.

On August 29, 2021, Ravi Thackeray and his wife Ranjana Thackeray strangled their son Chirag and daughter Gunjan in the Sahara township of Misrod in Bhopal. Later, both of them consumed poison. Ravi, an engineer, had lost his job and was under stress for two months due to financial constraints.

The police had recovered a four-page suicide note in which he had written that unemployment had rendered him unable to face hunger, uncertain future, illness, outstanding school fees, loan installments, and house rent. “I am not even able to deposit the school fees of the children. I live in a rented house because I could not get possession of the house for which I had taken a bank loan of Rs. 17 lakh.”

Before this, Kundan, a resident of Shehadkhedi in Rajgarh, had made a video before hanging himself in July 2021. In his video, he had requested the Chief Minister to give employment to the students. He had said, “I am hanging today because of unemployment.”

Some Indore-based newspapers had quoted the contents of this video in the news. He had also left a suicide note in which he had said that he had prepared for government services in Ujjain for three years, but could not get a job and had crossed the upper age limit.