Praveen Chakravarti elaborates on promise to fill “30 lakh govt posts”, says a Congress government will ensure that anybody seeking apprenticeship gets it for annual stipend of Rs 1 lakh
Praveen Chakravarty
March 08, 2024
All India Professionals’ Congress chairperson and manifesto committee member Praveen Chakravarty with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge (X, formerly Twitter)
All India Professionals’ Congress chairperson Praveen Chakravarty is among the key members of the Opposition party’s manifesto committee. On the day Congress leader Rahul Gandhi announced the party’s five poll guarantees for the youth, Chakravarty discussed the rationale behind the promises, including the right to apprenticeship, and how it will fulfil them if voted to power. Excerpts:
Will the five guarantees that Rahul Gandhi announced on Thursday be part of the Congress manifesto?
We discussed them in the manifesto committee. It is only after a discussion with the manifesto committee that Mr Gandhi made the announcement today.
The first promise is to fill up to 30 lakh vacant posts. How was this figure calculated?
The Central government vacancies are about 9.6 lakh. Then there are vacancies in health services, primary education, higher educational institutions, central armed police forces, courts, and judiciary vacancies. All combined are 30 lakh. There are state government vacancies that we have not taken into account. That is another 30 lakh.
Why are these posts vacant?
There could be various reasons. What we are saying is that we are going to take this up on a war footing. We will provide a timetable by which these vacancies will be filled. And that is the not important idea here. The timetable will also be published.
Can you elaborate on the idea of the right to apprenticeship?
That is the biggest announcement in my view. This, first and foremost, is going to be a right. Apprenticeship is a technical word. It is essentially a legal right for every diploma holder or college graduate below the age of 25 years. They can now demand proper formal employment for a year and they will get it. It is like MGNREGA demand. It is going to be right. To the best of my knowledge, India will be the first country in the world to make it a legal right, which means there will be demand for this and then we have to ensure that this demand gets fulfilled because it is a right.
We looked at what could be the potential demand, what could be the potential supply, vacancies. Anybody who demands will now get a one-year internship or apprenticeship with a private, public or government organisation with an annual stipend of Rs 1 lakh. But most importantly, this will get them skills, dignity, and employability. It is not an unemployment allowance. This is about getting them ready and providing them with dignity. They finish their studies and they get to go to a proper workplace.
How will you implement it?
There is already an Apprentices Act of 1961. What we are saying is that we will change it to make a right. The present Act has various conditions, how any organisation can participate and all that. We are going to revamp it.
Do you foresee any resistance from the private sector?
As per the present Act, the private sector is already mandated to take up apprentices. What we are saying is that we will expand the scope of the private sector and more importantly the cost will be shared between the government and the private sector. During our consultations with MSMEs, a lot of them actually said they like the idea because right now they are excluded because they are too small. They want to take in apprentices because it also means lower employee costs for them. Only 45,000 companies now participate in the apprenticeship programme. We will expand it to one million.
The Congress has promised a law to deal with paper leaks. But the Centre only recently enacted a law, putting in place harsher punishment for ‘organised’ paper leaks.
There will be a monetary compensation component. It will be in the manifesto.
The party has also promised social security protection for gig workers. Will it be on the lines of last year’s Rajasthan law?
We are going with the upcoming Telangana model. There is an Act that is currently being planned in Telangana that will improve the Rajasthan model. We had consultations with Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and his entire Cabinet. We are also working with companies such as Zomato, Uber, and Ola as well as the gig workers. It will be a slightly improved version of the Rajasthan model.
The key feature will be social security for gig workers. What happens if there is an accident on their job, what happens to their health Insurance? The second is better working conditions. At the same time, we also understand that the employers today, most of them, do not make profits. So, we don’t want to overburden them with costs.
The Centre already has a startup fund. What is the new thing the Congress is promising?
We will restructure all the existing funds and half of that — in our view, it will be around Rs 5,000 crore — will be allocated for the youth under the age of 40 but spread across every parliamentary constituency and district.
This will automatically take care of social justice because roughly it will come to about Rs 10 crore for every parliamentary constituency. There will be reserved constituencies, there will be constituencies with huge OBC populations and minority populations. We will automatically ensure proportional representation of startup funds for youth and because of geographical dispersion, it will also take into account social justice.
Did the party consult outside experts, economists?
Both Mr Chidambaram, the chairman of the manifesto committee, and I personally consulted more than 20 experts across the world and in India. To be fair, the right to apprenticeship idea actually did come from an expert. It would not be fair for me to name them because I am not sure if they want to be named or not. But we consulted many experts. We also spoke with Dr Manmohan Singh about some of these ideas and generally about the manifesto.