Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

[touchring]

Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

Victor Mallet in New Delhi


A Indian job advertisement for humble office tea boys and night guards? has attracted 2.32m applicants, including highly qualified graduates, in a sign of how desperate the swelling millions of young Indians are for job security.
Officials said it would take up to four years to conduct interviews for the 368 junior posts advertised by the Uttar Pradesh state government even if candidates were processed at the rate of 2,000 a day by multiple interview boards.

The unprecedented deluge of applications is the latest confirmation of the grim employment prospects in the poor and densely populated states of north India despite an official national unemployment rate of less than 5 per cent.
Narendra Modi, prime minister, promised to create jobs when he was elected last year at the head of the Bharatiya Janata party. His government has focused on programmes to develop workers’ skills, while party leaders have begged young Indians to become entrepreneurs.
But India is struggling to create employment even for the 12m school leavers entering the workforce each year, let alone for the accumulated backlog of unemployed among the population of 1.3bn.

Economists and investors put much of the blame on India’s highly restrictive labour laws, which discourage private employers from hiring, along with the privileges enjoyed by government employees and the “reservation” system of preferences for lower caste Indians. Fewer than a tenth of India’s 500m workers are employed in the formal sector, and half of those have jobs in government or state-owned companies such as Indian Railways.

Asked about the millions of applications for jobs as night-guards or office “peons” — the helpers who clean up and bring tea to bureaucrats — Surjit Bhalla, chairman of Oxus Investments, said: “Everything you know is wrong with India is personified in that statistic?.?.?.?both our labour laws and the fact that in a government job you do nothing and get paid a nice, healthy, fat wage. You can’t be fired. You’re there forever.”

The Uttar Pradesh government said it wanted the peons for the state assembly in Lucknow to be able to ride a bicycle and have at least five years of school education, but among the applicants were 255 with doctorates in subjects such as engineering as well as 25,000 with master’s degrees. Salaries start at about Rs16,000 ($240) per month.
“There are no jobs anywhere,” Alok Chaurasia, who has a degree in electronics and communication engineering, told NDTV television news. “The moment I saw the ad for the peon’s job, I applied. Any work is better than nothing.”


25,000 applicants had master’s degrees and 255 had doctorates
...............

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4841a...#axzz3m9SMmf3W

[dcarrigg]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4841a...#axzz3m9SMmf3W

A friend of mine in South Korea talked to me the other night about the number of PhDs in engineering and hard sciences he had bag his groceries and clean his apartment and do other menial tasks over the last year. He says they have over-educated the populous for a while, but that things are getting much worse lately. He also talked about the increasing severity of "death clouds" of pollution crossing the Yellow Sea from China that shut cities down for a day or two.

This doesn't sound too different. The "skills gap" is a farce. There's only a capital and wealth and income gap. And the wider they get, the more extreme these stories will become.

[lektrode]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

boy oh boy, why does this sound familiar:

...Economists and investors put much of the blame on India’s highly restrictive labour laws, which discourage private employers from hiring, along with the privileges enjoyed by government employees and the “reservation” system of preferences for lower caste Indians. Fewer than a tenth of India’s 500m workers are employed in the formal sector, and half of those have jobs in government or state-owned companies such as Indian Railways.

and dont even get me started on gov-owed railways - never mind in a place where 45% of the 'salaried workforce' is now eligible for gov-mandated overtime...

Asked about the millions of applications for jobs as night-guards or office “peons” — the helpers who clean up and bring tea to bureaucrats — Surjit Bhalla, chairman of Oxus Investments, said: “Everything you know is wrong with India is personified in that statistic?.?.?.?both our labour laws and the fact that in a government job you do nothing and get paid a nice, healthy, fat wage. You can’t be fired. You’re there forever.”

GASP! ... now why does that sound oh-so familiar.... oh yeah... now i remember... uh huh...
.gov workers who abuse their 'privilege' ???
nahhh... that would never happen here...

The Uttar Pradesh government said it wanted the peons for the state assembly in Lucknow to be able to ride a bicycle and have at least five years of school education, but among the applicants were 255 with doctorates in subjects such as engineering as well as 25,000 with master’s degrees. Salaries start at about Rs16,000 ($240) per month.
“There are no jobs anywhere,” Alok Chaurasia, who has a degree in electronics and communication engineering, told NDTV television news. “The moment I saw the ad for the peon’s job, I applied. Any work is better than nothing.”


25,000 applicants had master’s degrees and 255 had doctorates

coming soon to a walmart or mickyD's near you?
another trillion in 'higher' education subsidies ought to do it nicely, dontcha tink?

.... The "skills gap" is a farce. There's only a capital and wealth and income gap. And the wider they get, the more extreme these stories will become.

+1
while i was somewhat skeptical on this line of thinking, since 2008 (never mind 2012) i've become convinced of its validity.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

A friend of mine in South Korea talked to me the other night about the number of PhDs in engineering and hard sciences he had bag his groceries and clean his apartment and do other menial tasks over the last year. He says they have over-educated the populous for a while, but that things are getting much worse lately. He also talked about the increasing severity of "death clouds" of pollution crossing the Yellow Sea from China that shut cities down for a day or two.

This doesn't sound too different. The "skills gap" is a farce. There's only a capital and wealth and income gap. And the wider they get, the more extreme these stories will become.

I remember stories in the 80's and early 90's of highly educated Russian Jews driving cabs and mopping floors in Israel after Israel's efforts to mass import Soviet era Russian Jews.

That was an artificially created over supply of highly skilled immigrants, but I wonder how much of a tailwind it helped create for Israel's tech boom in the 90's?

Could there be a directly related upside for South Korea's situation in 5-10 years? Glass half, or partially, full?

[photon555]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

Unless the capital (wealth) in a society is widely spread, there will be a dearth of people able to risk their savings to start a new business, and follow an idea through to a useful and successful realization.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

Could there be a directly related upside for South Korea's situation in 5-10 years? Glass half, or partially, full?

Assuming that there are jobs available for higher skills, it would be a glass half full scenario although ageism could be a problem if it takes too long for the jobs to arrive. However, the quality of the education matters tremendously. I'd be very surprised if the Korean engineers working as grocery store clerks graduated from the top schools such as Seoul National University. It's my understanding that those students are typically hired by the chaebols and make good wages. This isn't to say that the non-elite university in Korea are no good; I don't know.

But to the point of India, I question whether a degree from one of the non-elite institutions is worth anything at all. My experience has not been all positive although it's possible the people I've encountered lied about their college degrees.

[dcarrigg]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

Assuming that there are jobs available for higher skills, it would be a glass half full scenario although ageism could be a problem if it takes too long for the jobs to arrive. However, the quality of the education matters tremendously. I'd be very surprised if the Korean engineers working as grocery store clerks graduated from the top schools such as Seoul National University. It's my understanding that those students are typically hired by the chaebols and make good wages. This isn't to say that the non-elite university in Korea are no good; I don't know.

You are right about this. From what I've been told, if you graduate Seoul National University or KAIST, you're golden. But even the tier directly below the top two can lead to bagging groceries if you're not top of your class or you don't score well enough in civil service exams to get some base bureaucrat job that's better instead (Yonsei, KU, Sungkyunkwan). Postech from what I understand is a flip of the coin, depending on if you did metallurgy or anything else.

But the level right-under-elite usually are fairly well respected. It's not uncommon to see people bounce from Korea University (not national) to the American ivy leagues and back between doctorates, post-docs, and tenure-track appointments.

I suppose the thing I don't really know is whether it's a scenario where the top students are really good and the bottom are really bad and everyone just gets a degree for participating or not.

But to the point of India, I question whether a degree from one of the non-elite institutions is worth anything at all. My experience has not been all positive although it's possible the people I've encountered lied about their college degrees.

If the other schools are anything like the med schools in India, fraud is probably pervasive and rampant. There's a place where everything's an "Institute of Science" or "Institute of Technology" even worse than Korea. The hyper-focus on STEM and business production even in the cases where there is no fraud is probably also detrimental to innovation long-term. Is there ever an Einstein if he doesn't read Plato's dialogue on Parmenides? How many millions of other examples like this are out there?

[ssvasulu]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4841a...#axzz3m9SMmf3W

The problem is that westerners interpret the news, keeping their conditions in perspective. Indians know well that govt offices are hot bed of corruption and a lot of money changes hands via these offices. Even if you are a peon in one such office, you will make enough money to live like a king (unofficially of course).

This news is not discussion worthy. It is discussion worthy, if similar ad is placed by private corporation where money does not change. I am pretty sure that there will be <100 applications in such case.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: FT: Indian job ad receives 2.3m applicants

If the other schools are anything like the med schools in India, fraud is probably pervasive and rampant. There's a place where everything's an "Institute of Science" or "Institute of Technology" even worse than Korea. The hyper-focus on STEM and business production even in the cases where there is no fraud is probably also detrimental to innovation long-term. Is there ever an Einstein if he doesn't read Plato's dialogue on Parmenides? How many millions of other examples like this are out there?

I sometimes get the impression that if the U.S. truly acted in its best interests and cut the spigot on all of the outsourcing/offshoring to India, India would collapse economically. Imagine my astonishment some years ago when I read that there are people living in India who work with matters of American law for American firms. (I can't remember if these Indians had law degrees in American law or they merely had training in American law.) I could be misremembering the details but I recall reading that there are more Indians studying and working in American law in India than Indians studying and working in Indian law.