A major demand since the 1969 movement was a fair share for Telangana in recruitment to government jobs, one of the conditions in the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the basis for merger of Telugu-speaking areas of Hyderabad state with Andhra.
Published Jul 17, 2024 | 12:00 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 17, 2024 | 12:00 PM
Job aspirants were dispersed using from the City Central Library premises on Monday. (Sourced)
In an ironic and surrealist development, the Telangana police swooped down on agitating unemployed youth at the City Central Library in Hyderabad on the night of Monday, 15 July. It was the same place where Rahul Gandhi had met them and got a feel of their “unfathomable” plight in November last.
While the previous meeting was full of love, affection, and promises, this time it was raging slogans that were met with police batons and detentions.
The City Central Library in Ashok Nagar has been a shelter for hundreds of aspiring unemployed youngsters for quite some time. With a sprawling ground around the main library building, the jobless youth had made it their hangout with each buying a chair for themselves and spending some 10 to 12 hours a day studying.
Even during the BRS regime, Ashok Nagar was a safe and secure place to study, coordinate, and struggle. However, the police then could never enter the premises but had to wait outside the gates.
But on Monday, police personnel, including those from Rapid Action Force, barged into the premises, forced all the youth into the library building, and locked it. Ten youths. who were chanting slogans, were arrested and taken to the police station.
A day earlier, just a kilometer away at the Ashok Nagar Circle and a couple of kilometers away at Dilsukh Nagar, thousands of slogan-raising unemployed youth were cordoned off by thousands of policemen. A few days ago, the youth were baton-charged on the Osmania University Campus.
The police had not entered the library premises during the previous BRS rule. (Screengrab)
Protests and hunger strikes continue and the agitation of the unemployed youth has been raging for the past couple of weeks at various places in the city.
Merely seven months ago, the same unemployed youth were pampered and goaded by the Congress against the ‘mismanaged’ recruitment process by the previous BRS government. In fact, the Congress sponsored a ‘Bus Yatra’ by the youth campaigning for the party against the BRS during the elections.
There is a complete turnaround now with the BRS trying to woo the protesters and the Congress blaming the BRS for fomenting the crisis.
Indeed it is a veritable crisis, a long-pending one, raising its head again. Unemployment has been a historic problem in Telangana that contributed to a number of social movements in the past couple of decades.
The 1969 Jai Telangana movement had its roots in unemployment and similarly, unemployed youth were the mainstay of the 1995-2014 second round of the Telangana movement that finally achieved a separate state.
Throughout the movement, a solution to the unemployment problem was one of the main planks of the statehood movement.
A major demand since the 1969 movement was a fair share for Telangana in recruitment to government jobs, one of the conditions in the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the basis for merger of Telugu-speaking areas of Hyderabad state with Andhra to form Andhra Pradesh in 1956.
Occupying 40-42 percent share in area and population, Telangana felt it to be a fair share to have 40-42 per cent government jobs. But from 1956 to 2014, Telangana never got it.
According to rough estimates by Prof K Jayashankar, the ideologue of Telangana statehood movement, out of the 12 lakh government employees in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, Telangana should have got five lakh jobs, but it was always in the range of 2.5 lakh to three lakh only.
There was a hope that Telangana’s sons of the soil would get at least two lakh to 2.5 lakh jobs with the formation of separate state. Some leaders of Telangana employees’ unions even raised this figure to three lakh.
But immediately after the state formation, the then-chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao said told the Assembly that his government would fill 1,07,000 jobs within a year. However, his government, in two terms and nine years and a half, could not achieve this target.
In those ten years, at least 50,000 employees retired from service and with the formation of 23 new districts, there was need to fill more jobs. But that was not done.
Finally in 2021, the Pay Revision Committee under the chairmanship of IAS officer CR Biswal said while the sanctioned government jobs were 4,91,304, the actual employee strength was 3,00,178.
Thus the difference of 1,91,126 was recognised as the vacancies to be filled up. (There were some redundant posts and departments in the sanctioned strength and nobody ever tried to clean that up).
During the last two years of BRS rule, the figure of 1.91 lakh jobs was making rounds and there was growing discontent among the unemployed youth.
The Congress campaign for the 2023 Assembly elections had this context and that’s why its election manifesto was full of promises for the unemployed youth.
By then, there were 30 lakh registered unemployed (most probably some 10-15 percent of them were already employed and looking for a better job) and the Congress asked these 30 lakh youth and their parents (another 60 lakh) to teach a lesson to the BRS.
To attract this large segment of 90 lakh votes, the Congress manifesto, under the headings of ‘Transparent government recruitment’, ‘Eradication of unemployment’, ‘youth and employment generation’ made a number of promises.
The promises included ‘Filling up two lakh jobs in the first year’, ‘Filling up all SC, ST, BC, Minority back log posts in the first year’, ‘₹4,000 unemployment dole till employment and livelihood opportunities are created for unemployed youth’, ‘provision of 75 percent reservation for Telangana youth in all private companies that receive government incentives’, “Announcement of mega District Selection Commission (for teacher recruitment) in the first Cabinet meeting’ and ‘announcing job calendar with all vacancies in all departments on every 2 June and filling up by 17 September’.
Though it is more than seven months since this government was formed, none of these promises has been implemented. Of course some of these promises are mid-and long-term, but at least some of them have a specific duration of six months or one year.
Though the government has ordered the recruitment to about 29,381 posts in four installments in the past seven months, all of them were notified, exams conducted, and interviews held during the previous BRS regime.
The last phase of handing over recruitment letters was remaining in the process and this government cannot lay claim, having traversed only the last mile alone.
Apart from these recruitments, the present government has initiated process to fill about 20,000 or 30,000 jobs only out of the promises two lakh.
In fact, whether this figure of two lakh vacant jobs is realistic or not is a moot question. Though the Biswal committee cited this figure, it did not factor in redundancies and one does not know how many from this figure will remain after a thorough clean-up.
Further, Telangana has been a state at lowest level when one takes into consideration employee per 1,000 population ratio. While the national average is 13.9, Telangana had only 8.5 in terms of sanctioned strength.
There has been further erosion in the actual employment. While Kerala and Telangana have the same population, Kerala has a sanctioned strength of 5,45,423, at least 54,000 more than Telangana. The Telangana government for the first 10 years has never tried to correct these anomalies.
All these led to severe discontent and opposition in the ranks of the unemployed against the BRS government and the Congress was able to cash on it. But after coming to power the Congress government has been showing no inclination to resolve or at least try to resolve this vexed question.
Resolution to unemployment problem may be a large, complex and complicated , but at least the government does not seem to be inclined to resolve much lesser, simpler issues also.
For example, the Group 1 aspirants have been requesting the government to implement 1:100 principle instead of 1:50 to qualify for the mains exam. This is to allow them to handle another hurdle after passing preliminary qualification.
The preliminary was held after almost 12 years and one does not know when there will be another chance for them, given the upper-age limit. Thus they want to test their luck or talent and there is nothing wrong in allowing them to do so.
Similarly, as the new government hurriedly issued a number of notifications, aspirants are forced to write exams of different syllabi in a row and they are asking some of the exams to be rescheduled. They want a transparent, aspirant-friendly scheduling of the exams and with a minimum coordination between different departments it may not be difficult.
Again, the aspirants are asking to increase the number of positions in Group 2 and Group 3 since there are vacancies and that will give them a leveraging chance.
The government is not even listening to these genuine issues and not coming forth to have a dialogue with the disgruntled youth. Instead, it chose to blame them as agitating on the behest of the Opposition or coaching centres. Much worse, it is trying to crush the protests using the police and paramilitary forces.
The unemployed youth have suffered several postponements, breach of promises, and disappointments leading to suicides in the past. To avoid that vicious circle they supported and helped the Congress come to power.
However, it now seems the new dispensation is pushing them into another vicious circle.
(N Venugopal is Editor, Veekshanam, a Telugu monthly journal. Views are personal. Edited by Neena)
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