Railway expands job opportunities, recruitment to push automation

Railway recruitment to push automation

Paradoxically, the lowering of qualifications will help pull in more services in the Railways to the automation mode and create space to finance those. 

Subhomoy Bhattacharjee

New Delhi, 25 May 

Just before releasing the advertisements for recruitment to about 90,000 posts, the rail ministry this year decided to cut the level of qualification required for most of the jobs to that of class 10 pass instead of the more stiff ITI qualification.

This immediately expanded the universe of potential candidates from six million to a vastly larger catchment of nearly 63 million. 

Paradoxically, the lowering of qualifications will help pull in more services in the Railways to the automation mode and create space to finance those.  The Railways argued that most of the Group C and D posts do not need the candidates to learn anything more than they get to learn at the level of class 10. So, putting the ITI in the eligibility requirement was unnecessary.  

“Essentially, the jobs in railways have to do with basic services like clean up and maintenance of tracks and coaches. These can be done by a class 10 passout too,” said a top official from the Indian Railway Personnel Service, the cadre of officers who handle recruitment. 

The recruitment however, is coming after a gap of five years, instead of the usual two. It will allow the Railway Board to cut the gripe among the powerful railway unions about declining job opportunities in the Railways. The last such mass recruitment in India’s largest transport infrastructure utility was in 2013, when nearly 20,000 people were offered jobs in posts like trackman, sanitary staff, office messengers, porters and as trains clerk, guards in goods train and traffic apprentices. 

Incidentally, a similar exercise was aborted in 2016. The department had decided to raise the bar for entry to ITI pass for all applicants. But that would have raised the financial cost for the Railways from the new recruits as they would have demanded a higher salary. The department took the plea that as the upgraded requirement was not made public sufficiently in advance, the exercise would be held later. 

The present exercise combines the backlog from that exercise with fresh vacancies. Hence, the mega numbers. It also serves two purposes. Besides seemingly expanding the job opportunities, the posts offered will remain concentrated at low levels of salary. So, the additional financial pressure on the Railways from them is minimal. Instead, they allow the organisation to shift the more technical jobs to automation and raises productivity while also freeing up funds to finance the migration. 

The Railways currently employs 1.31 million people as per Budget 2018-19. These numbers are of course variable by a few hundred thousand. Budget 2017-18 had put the numbers for the same year at 1.33 million.

Irrespective of the swings, the numbers make the Railways the highest employer among the central government departments. In addition, it has about a little more 1.4 million people as pensioners. Since the average pension is half the salary of those employed, the effective number of employees on the rolls of Rail Bhawan is above 2 million. Of those employed, more than 80 per cent are in non-technical trades with pretty low-value addition. 

Budget 2018-19 shows that wages and pension account for 65.4 per cent or about two thirds of the revenue generated by the Railways. This number would expand asymmetrically if the Railways employs more technically qualified personnel.

It makes far more sense to instead conduct periodic examinations for recruitment to absolutely base level jobs while handing over the complex jobs to machines. The present exercise assumes that a similar number of people but with higher salary would retire by the end of 2019. This means the Railways will get more financial space to pursue automation of its staff functions.  In its sister concern, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, which is under the urban development ministry, jobs of drivers are being handed over to machines.

Within the Railways too, the trend is evident. In just one year, the budget for signalling and telecom has jumped by 141 per cent. It is the first department within the Railways that plans to eliminate human interface in less than five years. This means the most loved railway signature of an employee flagging a train with green or red flag will be history even in far flung stations. A little noticed announcement in the last budget presented for the Railways by former minister Suresh Prabhu in 2014-15 was for the organisation to also go paperless in five years.