Goa’s Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar called it straight when he said Goan youth are not willing to do hard work interaction session ‘Vision for Youth’ at the State Youth Parliament programme organised by Goa Legislative Secretariat. The challenge though is to change not just the mindset but the job landscape,
The growing deficit between jobs desired and jobs available will be something that the state government will have to contend with. What it can fix and it should are these. Firstly, students emerging from colleges, specialised institutes and training institutes should have the spaces to get absorbed either in government or in the private sector. The aspect of laziness is worth looking at with a rider that an assessment has to be made of the opportunities available matching qualifications and skill sets. Then a calculation needs to be made of the number of opportunities, vacancies available in the non government sector to match each skill set or qualification and the percentage of those vacancies fulfilled by Goan candidates.
Inerestingly the Chief Minister said, “I feel dissatisfied that the different opportunities created by the government are (not) really reaching everyone 10,000 thousand jobs in Goa have been taken up by people from Jharkhand and Orissa.”
Now we have a piquant situation where it is being felt that Goans are lazy and wish to be employed by the government and yet another situation where 10,000 government jobs have been bagged by those from “Jharkhand and Orissa”, according to the CM. This therefore brings back to the core issue of context. We must know what percentage of jobs, this number of 10,000 constitutes. At the same time the context will be complete once we know the kind of jobs that were on offer.
Meanwhile there are a few realities that are pretty obvious to give a context to this discussion in any case. While there is a section which wants government jobs because they want easy money, the felt need to acquire skilled jobs commensurate with skill and training is also on the rise. And this need has to be fed and the state must prepare by augmenting and strengthening the ecosystem and infrastructure that allows the private sector to absorb local persons with adequate skill sets and education.
For instance on day 1 of the going BNI-GEMS Biz fest in Goa, there were 1635 registrations, with 600 candidates getting shortlisted to work for various high-profile Goan companies. At least 66 companies are sitting in various stalls waiting for the “right” candidate to visit them for a need for job.
The way forward has to be on the broad lines.
-The educational system gives us zero vision to think about the future. All aspects of the educations system must be built with the “what next” approach instead of degrees being an end in themselves.
-New kinds of government jobs need to be created for faster delivery and based heavily on technology which will be able to absorb and empower the next generation of skilled Goan who would have broken away from the shackled of laziness.
Having a quota for Goans for private sector jobs is not the answer. Instead Goans must get the right of first refusal of all the top skill based jobs thrown open by new companies setting up shop. This gives Goans who have the education and the skill to compete with the top jobs on merit, and with the advantage of having the first go at those jobs.
It’s is simple really. The lazy ones cannot define the landscape. But the hungrybones must be given the best possible professional environment to feed on.
