Having decided to frame unemployment as one of its major talking points against the BJP government during the Lok Sabha poll campaign, the Congress is set to come up with some “out of the box” promises in its manifesto to ease joblessness and soften the blow of repeated exam paper leaks, hoping they would strike a chord with the youth. The Congress think tank is said to be looking at the much-praised apprenticeship model of Germany and tailoring it for Indian conditions. The German dual education model (vocational education and training system) allows smooth education-to-work transitions with young people getting on-the-job time at a company while studying at a vocational school. The model, Congress leaders believe, offers the youth an attractive way to enter the job market. The challenge is to tailor the model to suit Indian conditions since the private sector as well as the public sector will have to be involved. Sources said the Congress’s manifesto committee, headed by former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, is in the last stages of drafting the document. The Congress hopes the apprenticeship model that it is likely to propose can strike a chord with the aspirational India, especially the urban youth. The party is said to be working out the nitty-gritty of the proposal including details like the duration of the apprenticeship period and stipend. “The model will give the young people the headstart for a job… They will become more employable… It is also like the right to a job. Anybody can demand and get a job for a year,” sources said. The party is also said to be working on a promise to soften the blow of repeated question paper leaks which has resulted in cancellation of several examinations across states. The Central government recently came out with a law to deal with paper leaks, putting in place harsher punishment for “organised” paper leaks, defining the offence as an “unlawful activity committed by a person or a group of persons indulging in unfair means in collusion and conspiracy to pursue or promote a shared interest for wrongful gain in respect of a public examination”. Sources in the Congress said the party is looking at a proposal which involves payment of monetary compensation to candidates affected by paper leaks and cancellation of competitive examinations. Coupled with the two, sources said, could be a promise of assistance or creation of an enabling environment to help the youth venture into startups and businesses. The Congress has been heavily critical of the government over joblessness. Rahul Gandhi, who is leading a political yatra from Manipur to Mumbai, has been constantly talking about unemployment. Addressing a rally in Gwalior Sunday, he said the youth unemployment rate in India is higher than countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The ruling side has often countered the Congress, pointing to the fact that the last Periodic Labour Force Survey for the period July 2022 to July 2023 showed that the unemployment rate has fallen significantly — from 6.6 per cent to 5.1 per cent over the last year. Although the unemployment rate for urban areas was at the lowest level since the launch of the PLFS bulletin in 2018, the survey also showed that nearly 14 states recorded a higher urban unemployment rate than the national average.
