Some reflections on the recent incidents at Railway Recruitment Boards
by BA and Venkatesh Sundaram
Source of image: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/railways-warns-protesters-conduct-unbecoming-may-lead-to-jobs-ban-7741785/
Image caption: Aspirants block railway tracks during their protest over alleged erroneous results of Railway Recruitment Board’s Non-Technical Popular Categories (RRB NTPC) exam 2021, at Muzaffarpur Terminal Railway Station in Muzaffarpur, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022. (PTI Photo)
In January 2022, there were reports of widespread unrest and rioting surrounding jobs advertisements of the Railway Recruitment Board in UP and Bihar. Reportedly over 2 crore applications were received for a little over forty thousand positions that were available. This incident brought to the fore the extreme conditions of unemployment and underemployment in our country. There is an acute shortage of opportunities. There are literally a hundred aspirants for each available job. It may be recalled that Indian Railways ranks amongst the top employers in the world, holding records in this aspect, the system having been built over well a century, using the resources and hard work of generations of Indians.
Mainly government-owned, there have been attempts in the last decades to privatise key parts of the railways, especially services such as catering as well some routes. There is now talk of more privatisation to come. This latter news is not a surprise since this has been the focus of the government, since the launching of the so-called privatisation and liberalisation from around 1990, with an acceleration taking place recently.
When India became independent in 1947, its people looked forward to a better future. This necessarily meant that people would be able to have decent livelihoods. This in turn meant that the economy would have to be oriented towards fulfilling the ever-increasing material and cultural needs of the people – including providing livelihood and jobs. The Constitution of India adopted in 1950, spoke of high ideals of humanity – equality, dignity, rights of the individual and so on. However, while the Constitution recognises the right to property – including the right of individuals and families to own large-scale means of production, it did not recognise the right to work, the right to have a decent livelihood etc as fundamental rights.
The rulers of India essentially adopted a document entitled A Brief Memorandum Outlining a Plan of Economic Development for India – popularly known as the “Bombay Plan”[1], drafted by the biggest capitalists of the time such as J R D Tata and G D Birla, in 1944, as its’ economic blueprint. In the model of so-called “mixed-economy” that was adopted by India post 1947, infrastructure was building using public sector undertakings. This was primarily because the capitalists of India had not yet become rich and powerful enough to invest capital in infrastructure, which typically is large and has a longer gestation period. People were fooled into thinking that the companies owned by the government were part of a “socialist” sector, and that the needs of the general population would also be taken care of by government-owned companies. In reality, the main purpose of the infrastructure such as roads, railway systems, electricity distribution networks, etc built and operated by the government, as well as of the government-owned companies, was to facilitate the business of the capitalists. They could get heavy machinery at relatively cheap rates, as well as cheap electricity, ready-made systems for transport of raw materials and finished goods across the length and breadth of the country, and so on. And the government could at least pay lip service to aspects like job creation, social welfare etc.
Over the first four decades this model allowed the big private players in India to build muscle and to develop into a more self-reliant avatar, with aspirations for further expansion and inroads into other sectors of the economy, so far owned by the governments at the Centre and in the states. The big capitalists who rule the roost in India no longer felt it was necessary to keep up pretences of social welfare, socialist sector of the economy, etc. Hence the era of ‘liberalisation and privatisation’ was ushered in by the Narsimha Rao Government in the early nineties. By no means was this transition peaceful and painless. On the contrary, it was accompanied by catastrophic events like the demolition of the Babri Masjid and preceded by years of unrest in various parts of the country especially in Punjab.
However, the inroads made my privatisation and liberalisation, and the whittling down of public services has led to a further narrowing of opportunities for the millions of youths requiring jobs. This at a time when there are millions of young men and women, many of them decently educated, and tens of thousands more joining the job market year after year. It must be noted that this reduction in job opportunities is coupled with a situation where agricultural activity is becoming more and more capital and machinery-intensive, meaning that less people can be gainfully employed in that sector with every passing year. Moreover, as the recent mammoth and epic protests by the farmer has shown, the government is hell-bent upon facilitating the entry of the largest corporates into the agricultural sector, further endangering the livelihoods and even very existence of millions of people. Added to this are cataclysmic events, often prompted by narrow and self-serving political considerations, like demonetisation and the hurried and haphazard implementation of the GST regime. Most recently we have had the pandemic and chaotic impositions of lockdowns and curfews. All of these events have hit the poorer people the hardest; each of these events devastated tens of thousands of small enterprises, destroyed the livelihoods of millions.
But wait – do we not have a government which rules in the name of the entire people? A modern democracy? Then it definitely begs the question as to what the orientation of the Indian economy is, and what is the political process by which the Indian economy carries on, without any kind of obligation to the people of the country. The gap between the rich and the poor has grown by leaps and bounds, and India today has one of the worst inequalities in the world! It may be emphasized here that the events surrounding the Railway Recruitment Board riots are not a result of a policy change overnight but is a part of a longstanding process where jobs have simply disappeared.
Over the decades it is clear that the major political parties at all levels are those which are backed by the biggest money bags. In particular, the largest industrial houses which benefit immensely from the nuts and bolts of the economy also fund political parties, and whichever party comes to power only supports the interests of this class. The people are mute spectators who are given the right every so many years to cast a vote for one or another candidate who is not selected by them. They do not have the right to recall even in case of gross negligence of their interests – which more often than not is the rule rather than the exception. All the economic policies adopted by successive governments, as well as the annual budget are all dictated by the same moneyed interests. While lip service is paid to the `common man’ and to basics such as food security, clothing, shelter, education, and to job creation, the situation on the ground only continually worsens. The people are helpless at this state of affairs.
The need of the hour, therefore, is to demand that the Right to Employment deserves to be an enforceable Fundamental Right. However, in order for this to be achieved, a large scale participation of the people is required to mobilise the population of India to reclaim what is fundamentally theirs. A new system that will enshrine the right to a human existence, which includes security, dignity and a human life is a need of the hour. This is part and parcel of the struggle for emancipation and empowerment of the people of India, and part of the struggle for dignity and human rights.
[1] Remember the Bombay Plan? | Deccan Herald and others such as The story of JRD Tata, GD Birla’s “Bombay Plan” for India — Quartz India (qz.com)
