Mr Gadkari, check your facts. Huge govt vacancies exist in educational, health, railways, police and other sectors

By Gautam Thaker*
According to Union Labour Ministry statistics, the situation of unemployment in India is worrisome. As per its report, every day, 550 jobs are being eliminated. By tht count, 12 crore people have been being sacrificed at the altar of unemployment.
And, as per International Labour Organization (ILO) data, during 2017, about 1.83 crore people were rendered jobless. Thereafter, in 2018, approximately 1.86 crore and in 2019 another 1.9 crore people are estimated to be rendered jobless in India.
In the course of the election campaign in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had offered, through lofty promises, lots of hopes for providing employment opportunities. He had asserted that every year one crore new jobs would be created, but he could not do so after becoming Prime Minister. He failed in honouring his promise to the youth of the country.
In fact, under his regime, unemployment is continuing to rise. In the wake of demonetization and Goods and Services Tax (GST), lakhs of people have been rendered jobless. Clearly, during his regime the problem of unemployment has not been resolved.
Nitin Gadkari, senior Cabinet minister of the Modi government, recently said, nothing would be achieved by chasing reservation. As a matter of fact, employment opportunities are declining. Where are the jobs? he asked. In further said, recruitment in government jobs has been discontinued.
Jobs cannot be created merely by tall talk of development and industrialization. In the banking sector, because of IT-enabled working systems, job opportunities have been reduced. Ironically, another Cabinet minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, says that statistics of unemployment are a cause of concern. This is the real picture of the Modi government. The Prime Minister is simply incapable in creating job opportunities.
Ministers of the Modi government have admitted that there are no jobs. But facts show otherwise. In the educational sector up to the secondary level 10 lakh vacancies exist. In higher education 12,000 are there. In police 5 lakh, in Railways 2 lakh, in health sector 1.5 lakh, in armed forces 1.25 lakh, and in judiciary 6,000 of posts are lying vacant. But the government has not pronounced reasons for not filling up the posts.
Looking at the situation prevailing in Gujarat, as per records available from district employment exchanges, highly educated, educated and semi-skilled persons have not been able to secure jobs in either government or private sector. As per the information tabled in Parliament during the assembly session in March 2018, the tall talk of providing government jobs to 70,000 persons in a year has not turned out to be a reality. During two years, just 12,869 persons have got jobs.
As on date, considering figures of all the employment exchanges in all the districts of Gujarat, approximately 5,37,563 persons are registered as jobless. Claims were made at the Vibrant Gujarat world business summits, organized by spending crores of rupees, for creating lakhs of jobs with the help of capital investment.

During the summits, it was announced in 2007 that 13,12,436 jobs would be created, followed by 2009 another 29,81,021 and 2011 an additional 60,00,000 jobs. As against this, 55,463 jobs were created after the Vibrant Gujarat summit of 2007, and 3,84,954 jobs after the summit of 2009.

This is the position of employment situation in the “model state” of Gujarat. Ironically, even 100 days employment is not provided under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Gujarat.
---
*General secretary, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat

Comments

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram* When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

The selective memory of a violent city: Uttam Nagar and the invisible victims of Delhi

By Sunil Kumar* Hundreds of murders take place in Delhi every year, yet only a few incidents become topics of nationwide discussion. The question is: why does this happen? Today, the incident in Uttam Nagar has become the centre of national debate. A 26-year-old man, Tarun Kumar, was killed following a dispute that reportedly began after a balloon hit a small child. In several colonies of Delhi, slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Mataram” are being raised while demanding the death penalty for Tarun’s killers. As a result, nearly 50,000 residents of Hastsal JJ Colony are now living in what resembles a state of confinement.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Search This Blog