If there's one thing the angry, young, jobless man in Maharashtra isn’t, it’s enterprising. So employment means a secure job, preferably with the government, and while the number of jobs fall, the desperation grows.Yeshwant Killedar, 31, makes a frank admission: ‘‘Maharashtrians won’t do just any job. We need to motivate them.’’ As head of the Shiv Udyog Sena, the Sena’s employment wing at its nerve centre Dadar set up six years ago, he realises motivation won’t be enough.‘‘Where are the jobs?’’ says Killedar, a science graduate, as young men in plain pants and shirts swarm outside Sena Bhavan.Over the past six and a half years, the Udyog Sena interviewed 32,998 men to recommend to banks and private companies — including hotels such as the Hyatt, ITC Grand Maratha and JW Marriot. Only 3,176 got jobs. General secretary Dilip Karande says that closing industries, globalisation and the remains of the recession have frustrated Maharashtrian youth.In the Sena’s strongholds — central Mumbai spilling with out-of-work mill workers and grimy outer suburbs — shining India is an unreal fantasy. Mumbai’s gleaming new suburban malls, the overflowing nightclubs and a consumer boom happened without a single job being created. Businesses have got more efficient and leaner and the skills they require are absent from the vast ranks of Marathi youth.‘‘We find a wide gap in their skills and competency and what the industry wants,’’ says Deepak Deshpande, general manager (personnel) at Fiat Auto India in Kurla. The Shiv Udyog Sena will tell you that two-thirds of its job applications are for low-level jobs — peons, clerks, computer operators, stenographers. And the Sena responds with desperate acts like the attack on Biharis and bhaiyyas on Saturday or the one at a Mulund mall or a McDonald’s outlet in June. Across town near Mantralaya, young men and women continue to line up at the employment exchanges, despite knowing that the government stopped hiring in January 2001.‘‘Not even one per cent of them will get jobs,’’ says Shashikant Kharnare, Deputy Director of the Department of Employment and Self Employment’s Mumbai division. ‘‘We tell candidates there is no opportunity for employment.’’‘‘Our youth want jobs in sachivalayas, banks, municipality. They don’t want to be competitive,’’ says Karande.
