Chasing govt jobs, desperate youth flock coaching hubs year after year

The average number of years spent preparing for competitive exams as reported in this survey is 3 years and 3 months.

GN Shakya is a veteran of Allahabad’s test preparation centres. Like many others, he has been in pursuit of a secure government job for years--in his case, 16 years. During this time, he has amassed five degrees (BA, MA, LLB, B.Ed and M.Ed), and performed odd-jobs, all while studying for the professional examinations. “What work will we do when half our life goes by in finding a job?” he asked when we visited in early April 2019.

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This near-dejection has not caught hold of Deepak Maurya yet. Dressed in a white vest and shorts, the 17-year-old has just completed his 12th grade exams and taken a train to Allahabad, “taiyyari ke liye”--“to prepare”.

Maurya is staying with a relative in a room in one of the many lodges in the neighborhoods around the University of Allahabad. This particular lodge houses about 20 people in a handful of 8ft by 9ft rooms, all of them doing taiyyari--for competitive exams for government jobs.

The test-preparation industry thrives in many parts of India, some of the most prominent in the north being Delhi; Allahabad, which attracts aspirants from eastern Uttar Pradesh; Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan; as well as smaller cities such as Sikar in the eponymous district in Rajasthan for those who cannot afford to go to big cities such as Jaipur.

Localities such as Vivek Vihar in Jaipur, Katra and Baghada neighbourhoods of Allahabad, and Mukherji Nagar, Rajendra Nagar and Munirka in Delhi, contain concentrations of the educated unemployed--those who constitute India’s historic demographic potential, vying for a shrinking pool of secure employment opportunities.

In near-identical neighbourhoods across these cities, thousands of youngsters spend some of their most productive years preparing for exams that may or may not get them government jobs. Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, 

recently referred to 25 million youth applying for 90,000 low-grade jobs in the Indian Railways as evidence that high growth has not produced enough jobs.

In this first of a two-part series, we share the findings of a survey and our interviews with aspirants on how much time and money they spend, and the disadvantages that those from particular socio-economic backgrounds face.

The second part will focus on the meaning these competitors attach to a government job, how they view the work in the private sector and what they think needs to be done to improve India’s employment situation.