#Reservation: Dear Mr Modi, 10% of zero is still zero

If governments in India don’t create jobs anymore, what’s the good of reservation in these jobs?

WrittenBy:Vivek Kaul
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The Narendra Modi government wants to introduce a 10 per cent reservation in government jobs and higher education for economically weaker sections among the upper castes, as well as all other communities which do not enjoy the current reservation benefits.

Let’s look at this issue pointwise:

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1. Politically, this is a sign of desperation. Having failed to largely achieve what it had promised in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and having lost three recent state Assembly elections, this is the last throw of the dice from the Narendra Modi government and the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is an attempt to seize control of the narrative which the Modi government has lost over the last six months or so.

Currently, the Indian Constitution does not allow the government to introduce reservations for economically weaker sections of the society. This will need to change. A constitutional amendment will need the support of two-thirds of members present for voting in the both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and not less than half the strength in both the houses. It will also have to be ratified by half the state legislatures. Given this, it will be interesting to see how quickly the government can push this through. Also, this is bound to be challenged in courts.

2. The bigger question, which I have often asked, is: does the government create jobs anymore? The answer is no. Let’s look at some data in support of this. Take a look at Table 1, which plots the number of central government employees over the years.

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Table 1: Does the government really create employment?

Between 2000-2001 and 2018-2019, a period of nearly two decades, the central government jobs have grown by around 7.3 per cent in absolute terms. This works out to around 0.4 per cent per year.

If we take a look at the Modi years between, around 1.78 lakh jobs have been added at the central government level. This works out to around 45,000 jobs a year, on an average. If a reservation of 10 per cent would have been in place for the economically weaker sections of the society, it would have added 4,500 jobs per year for them. In the context of India, where 10 million youth enter the workforce every year, 4,500 new jobs is close to zero.

3. Of course, central governments jobs are not the only government jobs on offer. Let’s take a look at the total number of employees employed by the central public sector enterprises over the years in Table 2.

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Table 2: Total number of employees of central public sector enterprises (Source).

As can be seen in Table 2, between 2006-2007 and 2016-2017, the number of people working for central public sector enterprises has gone down by close to five lakhs. In this case, the government has been destroying jobs and not creating them.

4. Let’s take the case of public sector banks. In 2012-2013, the total number of employees had stood at 8.77 lakh. By 2016-2017, this was down to 8.67 lakh. This is another case where government jobs have gone down.

5. Let’s look at state government jobs where the data is slightly outdated. As of 2011-2012, the total number of people working for the state governments stood at around 71.84 lakh. In 1990-1991, it had stood at 71.13 lakh. In between, it had risen to 74.80 lakh in 1996-1997 and has been falling since.

There is no reason to believe that this trend has been reversed since 2011-2012, given the financial condition of the state governments across India. Even if there has been an increase, it can be marginal at best.

In fact, when the Jat agitation broke out in Haryana a few years back, I had written a piece for Equitymaster where I had pointed out: “Between March 2001 and March 2014, the number of employees of the Haryana government went up from 3,19,027 to 3,40,698. This means an increase in jobs at the rate of 0.51% per year, over a 13-year period. This is slower than the rate of population growth.”

6. Looking at all this data, it is easy to conclude that governments don’t create jobs in India anymore. Hence, any reservation in government jobs for the economically weaker is basically meaningless. To put things simplistically, 10 per cent of zero is still zero.

7. One point that people have made to me on the social media is: but what about the reservation in education? In this case, I would suggest that they look carefully at the criteria that have been proposed for the reservation; practically everyone qualifies. Given this, what is the point of the reservation is a question well worth asking.

8. At a recent literature festival, I was a part of a panel discussing India’s jobs crisis. The final point I made in this discussion was that Indian governments do not create jobs. And given this, it leaves me surprised that no politician has seized on to the narrative of reservations in the private sector. The chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, has been talking about it. But Bihar barely has a private sector, hence, his talking hasn’t made any difference. Nevertheless, this is something that is bound to get picked up by a canny politician, sooner rather than later. The 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker sections will only give a fillip to this demand.

9. Reservations as a solution to jobs is a very 1960s and ‘70s formula of doing things. The problem is we are in the teens now. The government cannot create jobs. This has been more or less proven over the last three decades. What it can do is create conditions which create jobs. But that requires a lot of hard work and getting rid of the current way of doing things. Hence, on that front, this government, as well as the previous one, has failed miserably.

The fact that 70 years after Independence, Indian politicians are still selling reservations to the country tells us how dramatically they have failed us. All they can offer are palliatives (or jumlas for the lack of a better word). There are no solutions.

(The column originally appeared on Vivek Kaul Publishing and has been reproduced with the author’s permission.)

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