More than 25 million people have applied for 90,000 vacancies in India’s state-owned railway operator, an imbalance that illustrates the country’s struggle to find jobs for its employable millions.
The positions advertised by Indian Railways in February cover a variety of roles around the country: engine drivers, signalling staff, welders, porters, track maintenance workers, electricians and mechanics, among others.
About 62,000 of these jobs are open to applicants who have passed their 10th-grade school examinations and are between 18 and 31 years old. Salaries for these positions start at 18,000 rupees (Dh1,015) a month.
The selection process will begin with an online examination, conducted in English and 14 Indian languages, that all 25 million applicants will have to take in the next few months.
Indian Railways, which has 1.3 million people on its rolls, is the eighth-largest employer in the world. But the vacancies it is seeking to fill have built up over time.
“We’ve not been recruiting for the last couple of years, and attrition is already there. And so we require people,” Ashwani Lohani, the chairman of Indian Railways, told Reuters.
A job with the state railway operator is considered a prize. Employees are eligible for flats in state-allotted housing complexes, pensions, medical care and free travel on trains. Added to this is the security of long-term employment – as with most government jobs, layoffs never happen.
Such positions are even worth agitating for. On March 20, hundreds of students in Mumbai sat on the city’s commuter rail tracks, holding up train traffic to protest against one of Indian Railways’ newer recruitment policies.
For decades, Indian Railways had taken on students as apprentices in its technical workshops and hired them once they completed their training. In 2016, however, the company decided stop the automatic recruitment of apprentices, offering to hire just one in five of them.
"They give us training but then don't want to employ us," Somit Singh, an apprentice who had travelled to Mumbai from Gujarat, said during the protest. "How is this fair?"
The desperation for these jobs highlights a long-standing criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four years in power: that his government has failed to create employment.
When he was elected in 2014, Mr Modi promised an economic revival that would create many avenues for employment. Vowing to build up the manufacturing sector, for example, he said that his "Make in India" initiative would create 100 million jobs by 2022.
But the numbers show that Mr Modi has struggled in this regard. In February, India’s unemployment rate hovered around 6.1 per cent, the highest in 15 months, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a think tank based in Mumbai.
About two thirds of India's population of 1.25 billion is under the age of 35, and around one million Indians enter the workforce each month.
Yet India’s eight biggest sectors – manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, IT, education, health care, and hotels and restaurants – added just 155,000 new jobs in these sectors in 2015 and 231,000 in 2016, government data showed. The figures for 2017 have not yet been published.
In 2009, by contrast, under the opposition Congress party, India added a million new jobs.
The difficulties of providing employment have accompanied a slow turnaround of the economy, in a phenomenon that economists call “jobless growth”. India’s gross domestic product grew by 7.2 per cent in the final quarter of 2017, having slowed to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent between April and June last year.
The problem of joblessness is fast becoming a liability for Mr Modi, and providing ammunition to the Congress ahead of a general election next year. “While China is creating 50,000 jobs every 24 hours, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite launching Make in India, Startup India, and Digital India, creates only 450 to 500 jobs” in the same time, Rahul Gandhi, the Congress president, said at a state election rally in Karnataka last month.
Any aspirations that India's youth have to a white-collar life are being stymied by this lack of jobs, said Mihir Sharma, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank based in New Delhi.
The political impact of such a trend will be significant, Mr Sharma said. “The lack of career options … might give rise to anger and concern that times are becoming tougher, and not better, for young Indians.”
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Padmaavat
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Starring: Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor, Jim Sarbh
3.5/5
Company%20profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EHakbah%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2018%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENaif%20AbuSaida%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESaudi%20Arabia%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFinTech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E22%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInitial%20investment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%24200%2C000%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3Epre-Series%20A%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EGlobal%20Ventures%20and%20Aditum%20Investment%20Management%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Top financial tips for graduates
Araminta Robertson, of the Financially Mint blog, shares her financial advice for university leavers:
1. Build digital or technical skills: After graduation, people can find it extremely hard to find jobs. From programming to digital marketing, your early twenties are for building skills. Future employers will want people with tech skills.
2. Side hustle: At 16, I lived in a village and started teaching online, as well as doing work as a virtual assistant and marketer. There are six skills you can use online: translation; teaching; programming; digital marketing; design and writing. If you master two, you’ll always be able to make money.
3. Networking: Knowing how to make connections is extremely useful. Use LinkedIn to find people who have the job you want, connect and ask to meet for coffee. Ask how they did it and if they know anyone who can help you. I secured quite a few clients this way.
4. Pay yourself first: The minute you receive any income, put about 15 per cent aside into a savings account you won’t touch, to go towards your emergency fund or to start investing. I do 20 per cent. It helped me start saving immediately.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
The biog
Name: Capt Shadia Khasif
Position: Head of the Criminal Registration Department at Hatta police
Family: Five sons and three daughters
The first female investigator in Hatta.
Role Model: Father
She believes that there is a solution to every problem
The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
Engine: 80 kWh four-wheel-drive
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 402bhp
Torque: 760Nm
Price: From Dh280,000
RedCrow Intelligence Company Profile
Started: 2016
Founders: Hussein Nasser Eddin, Laila Akel, Tayeb Akel
Based: Ramallah, Palestine
Sector: Technology, Security
# of staff: 13
Investment: $745,000
Investors: Palestine’s Ibtikar Fund, Abu Dhabi’s Gothams and angel investors
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Sri Lanka's T20I squad
Thisara Perera (captain), Dilshan Munaweera, Danushka Gunathilaka, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Ashan Priyanjan, Mahela Udawatte, Dasun Shanaka, Sachith Pathirana, Vikum Sanjaya, Lahiru Gamage, Seekkuge Prasanna, Vishwa Fernando, Isuru Udana, Jeffrey Vandersay and Chathuranga de Silva.
Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
