Even as the country’s leaders, cutting across all political parties, take two steps forward and one step back on the issue of full-throttle liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy to unleash the bottled-up entrepreneurial energy of private industry to create jobs and real learning opportunities for India’s 242 million young citizens aged between 15-24, an unemployment tsunami is sweeping across the subcontinent.

Yet, the mass unemployment phenomenon countrywide is not solely the onus of the Central and state governments. Government failure to privatise bleeding public sector enterprises and improve ease of doing business conditions for industry, commerce and entrepreneurs combined with intellectual inertia and obsolescence on campus India is raining misery and disillusionment on millions of youth countrywide as the case histories given below vividly illustrate.

• Last September, when the Uttar Pradesh state government advertised in the print media to recruit 368 office peons, a job which requires the minimum qualification of primary school (class V) completion and the ability to ride a bicycle, it received 2.3 million applications. Among the applicants were 150,000 graduates, 24,969 postgraduates and 255 applicants with Ph D qualifications. The job pays Rs.16,000 per month.

• According to a news report (August 21, 2012) in The Independent (UK), in 2003 when the Municipal Council of Greater Bombay (BMC) advertised for 30 rat catchers — individuals required to hunt and kill some of the reportedly 88 million rats foraging in the garbage dumps and sewers of the city — the corporation received over 2,000 applications, including one from a college graduate. A decade earlier, another BMC ad for 70 rat-catchers attracted 40,000 responses, half of them from college/university graduates. The job pays about Rs.15,000 per month subject to a minimum of 25 rats being killed each night.

• In January this year when the municipal corporation of Amroha (pop.217,587), in the Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh (which includes the town of Rae Bareilly, the favoured Lok Sabha constituency of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has produced three prime ministers) advertised for 114 road sweepers (safai karamcharis), it received 19,000 applications, mostly from BA, B.Sc, MA, B.Tech and MBA degree holders. Meanwhile, the state’s Valmiki (Dalit) community organisations representing sweepers have protested, demanding the posts be reserved for the community. No educational qualifications are required for these jobs which pay Rs.17,000 per month.

• According to a report in the Mumbai-based daily DNA (March 10), advertisements for recruiting 4,883 police constables in Maharashtra, including 1,275 in Mumbai, were placed in the print media in late January. In response, over 700,000 applications were received. Among the applicants for this job which requires a minimum qualification of class XII, were 152,000 graduates (including 1,061 graduate engineers). The post pays Rs.17,000 per month plus modest perquisites.