Is public employment moving in the right direction? (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level : Not much
Mains level : Public employment status in India

Context

• Central government employment, and showed how the number of people employed by the Central government stagnated between 2006 and 2014 while the number employed by Central public sector enterprises declined.
• The number of vacancies in public employment increased sharply over this period, amounting to more than one-fifth of the number employed.

Employment pattern

• The evidence from the labour force surveys shows that public employment actually increased in the period between 2011-12 and 2017-18.
• Total public employment went up by nearly 200 lakh workers, which is definitely a significant increase . This was distributed among both rural and urban areas, with the bigger increase in rural areas.
• The bulk of the increase was in regular salaried employment.
• Indeed, casual employment in public works like the MNREGA actually appears to have fallen over this period. \
• Regular public employment is seen across Indian society as something to be desired, for its security and often higher-than-market wages for many functions.

Gendered view

• Most of the increase in regular public employment has been of women, in both rural and urban areas.
• Yet they are the ones who are more likely to be employed in these schemes, and are paid well below minimum wages with very poor working conditions.
• In rural areas, around 45 per cent of regular women workers in public employment are either illiterate or have only basic education, suggesting that they must indeed be scheme workers.

Way forward

• However, even here, a sizeable gap exists, although not as extreme as that for regular public employment.
• This suggests that the increase in public employment over this period need not really reflect a genuine expansion of good quality public services through the expansion of decent work by the government.
• Rather, it points to a continuation and intensification of a terrible failing of official policy in the past two decades: the attempt to provide essential social services on the cheap by exploiting the underpaid labour of women.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements about Index of Industrial Production:
1. Index of Industrial Production is compiled and published every month by DIPP, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
2. The current base year for the IIP series in India is 2011-12.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Correct Answer: B
Mains Questions:
Q.1) Is public employment moving in the right direction? Critically comment.