UP: Youth Organisations to ‘Celebrate’ CM Yogi’s Birthday Tomorrow as ‘Berozgaar Diwas’

Lucknow: To mark their protest against the high unemployment rates, youth in Uttar Pradesh are gearing up to celebrate ‘UP Berozgaar Diwas’ on Saturday, on the 50th birthday of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The novel protest will be carried out under the joint banner of Yuva Manch and Yuva Halla Bol -- a non-profit organisation that raises issues related to unemployment in the country.

The organisation said youth of Uttar Pradesh are angry and are mobilising against the Yogi government. Aspiring teachers among youth have been campaigning on Twitter since the past several days demanding new teacher recruitment. Despite the vacancies of lakhs of teachers, the government is not considering new recruitments, they claim.

According to the data recently released by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), about 10 million or one crore Indians have lost jobs in this period because the second wave of COVID-19. The general unemployment rate has touched a record high of 15%.

Besides, unemployment among the highly educated is alarming, which is not discussed generally. The unemployment rate for the highly educated, i.e. graduate level was 63% as per the 2019 data. This is sure to increase further after second wave of COVID-19.

According to an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) report released in 2019, about eight lakh students graduate in engineering every year in the country, but only 40% of them get jobs. According to a report by Aspiring Minds, an employment assessment company, over 80% Indian engineers are unemployed. More or less the same situation prevails among youth with other professional degrees, except medical, Yuva Manch claimed.

"The increasing unease among the educated unemployed can be gauged from the available data on unemployment of graduates. Uttar Pradesh has the most number of young people in the country and has the highest unemployment rate. There are lakhs of government job vacancies here but the youth have been cheated by the ruling BJP government. It keeps promising jobs but whenever they come out on the streets demanding jobs, the Yogi government rains baton on them,” said Rajesh Sachan, convener of Yuva Manch, while speaking with NewsClick.

Elaborating on the unemployment status in Uttar Pradesh, Sachan, who is based in Allahabad, also known as Prayagraj said out of 291 sanctioned posts in five major polytechnic institutes, including Institute of Engineering and Rural Technology (IERT) located in Prayagraj, only 65 were appointed, out of 13,704 sanctioned posts in government Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), over 8,734 posts are lying vacant.

“It is roughly estimated that around 70% of the sanctioned posts are lying vacant in these technical institutes of the state. Whereas in the last two decades, due to the increase in the number of technical students in these institutions, the sanctioned posts are much less than the requirement," Sachan added.

Meanwhile, as per data collected by Yuva Manch, about 2.5 lakh posts arelying vacant in the education department in UP alone. In fact, it is feared that the education department may be done away with, he said.

"At a time when there was need to strengthen the health infrastructure during pandemic, the state government did not bother to fill the posts lying vacant for many years," another person said.

Moreover, the vacancy situation in other departments, including electricity, irrigation, PWD, Jal Nigam, Municipal Corporation, Transport is similar.

Speaking with NewsClick, Govind Mishra, national convener of Yuva Halla Bol, an organisation that raises issues related to students, unemployment etc accused the Yogi government of completely failing in terms of giving jobs to youths.

“Instead of advertising government jobs, Yogi Adityanath and his entire team is spreading fake claims. Applicants of Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission have been protesting continuously, now teachers, contractual teachers, applicants of health departments too joined the league,” Mishra told NewsClick.

When asked about roadmap for the protest on Saturday, the organising youth said that they will hit the road following the COVID protocol and create buzz on Twitter.