The International labour Organisation defines , employment as a condition when Persons in of working age who, during a short reference period, were engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit. They comprise employed persons "at work", i.e. who worked in a job for at least one hour; and employed persons "not at work" due to temporary absence from a job, or to working-time arrangements (such as shift work, flexitime and compensatory leave for overtime). Article 16 of the Constitution, which guarantees equal treatment under law in matters of public employment, prohibits the state from discriminating on grounds of place of birth or residence.
Article 16(2) states that “no citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect or, any employment or office under the State”. The provision is supplemented by the other clauses in the Constitution that guarantee equality.
However, Article 16(3) of the Constitution provides an exception by saying that Parliament may make a law “prescribing” a requirement of residence for jobs in a particular state. This power vests solely in the Parliament, not state legislatures.
Indian the Constitution prohibit reservation based on domicile
When the Constitution came into force, India turned itself into one nation from a geographical unit of individual principalities and the idea of the universality of Indian citizenship took root. As India has common citizenship, which gives citizens the liberty to move around freely in any part of the country, the requirement of a place of birth or residence cannot be qualifications for granting public employment in any
Equality enshrined in the Constitution is not mathematical equality and does not mean all citizens will be treated alike without any distinction. To this effect, the Constitution underlines two distinct aspects which together form the essence of equality law — non-discrimination among equals, and affirmative action to equalise the unequals.So Reservation is permitted on ground of caste
The Supreme Court has ruled against reservation based on place of birth or residence. In 1984, ruling in Dr Pradeep Jain v Union of India, the issue of legislation for “sons of the soil” was discussed. The court expressed an opinion that such policies would be unconstitutional but did not expressly rule on it as the case was on different aspects of the right to equality.
Despite Article 16(2), “some of the States are adopting ‘sons of the soil’ policies prescribing reservation or preference based on domicile or residence requirement for employment or appointment… Prima facie this would seem to be constitutionally impermissible though we do not wish to express any definite opinion upon it, since it does not directly arise for consideration..,” the court said.
In a subsequent ruling in Sunanda Reddy v State of Andhra Pradesh (1995), the Supreme Court affirmed the observation in Pradeep Jain to strike down a state government policy that gave 5% extra weightage to candidates who had studied with Telugu as the medium of instruction.
In 2002, the Supreme Court invalidated appointment of government teachers in Rajasthan in which the state selection board gave preference to “applicants belonging to the district or the rural areas of the district concerned”.
“We have no doubt that such a sweeping argument which has the overtones of parochialism is liable to be rejected on the plain terms of Article 16(2) and in the light of Article 16(3). An argument of this nature flies in the face of peremptory language of Article 16(2) and runs counter to our constitutional ethos founded on unity and integrity of the nation,” the court said.
In 2019, the Allahabad High Court struck down a recruitment notification by the UP Subordinate Service Selection Commission which prescribed preference for women who are “original residents” of the UP alone. The state can recommend a preference to locals but ensuring that it is followed would be difficult. In 2017, Karnataka mulled similar legislation but it was dropped after the state’s Advocate General raised questions on its legality. In 2019, the state government once again issued a notification asking private employers to “prefer” Kannadigas for blue-collar jobs.
Exercising the powers it has under Article 16(3), Parliament enacted the Public Employment (Requirement as to Residence) Act, aimed at abolishing all existing residence requirements in the states and enacting exceptions only in the case of the special instances of Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura and Himachal Pradesh.
Constitutionally, some states also have special protections under Article 371. Andhra Pradesh under Section 371(d) has powers to have “direct recruitment of local cadre” in specified areas. In Uttarakhand, class III and class IV jobs are reserved for locals.
Some states have gone around the mandate of Article 16(2) by using language. States that conduct official business in their regional languages prescribe knowledge of the language as a criterion. This ensures that local citizens are preferred for jobs. For example, states including Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu require a language test.
1n April2020 , the Centre issued a notification reserving jobs for J&K domiciles expanding the definition to central government employees who had served in the erstwhile state for over 10 years. Before the abrogation of the special status of J&K in August last year, state government jobs were reserved exclusively for state subjects as per Article 370 of the Constitution.
In Assam, a committee has submitted its report for implementation of a key provision of the 1985 Assam Accord, recommending reservation in jobs for those who can trace their ancestry in the state before 1951. Current Scenario
7.32 % of the labour force, in the year 1999-2000, was unemployed. Inabsolute terms the number of unemployed stood at 26.58 million.
Since the above estimates are on Current Daily Status basis, the number of unemployed also includes the number of those who are underemployed interms of underutilization of the labour time. But it excludes suchunderemployed who are working at very low levels of income andproductivity. Among the employed, the proportion of poor is as high as in the population at large, suggesting a large proportion of workers engaged insubsistence employment.
Only about 8 % of the total employment is in organized sector. More than 90 % are engaged in informal sector activities, which is, largely outsidethe reach of any social security benefits and also suffers from many handicaps in form of limited access to institutional facilities and other support facilities. The educational and skill profile of the existing workforce is very poor. The educational and skill profile of the existing workforce is very poor.
The high unemployment rate in urban India subsided in the week ending 6 September 2020, falling to the lowest level since the lockdown began. The urban unemployment rate fell to 8.32 per cent in the week, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Interestingly, the employment situation in urban India has improved despite a severe loss of salaried jobs. An estimated 21 million salaried employees have lost their jobs by the end of August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20, which fell to 65 million in August 2020. The loss in salaried jobs was the biggest among all types of employment.Urban India’s growth story in terms of jobs is led by a significant rise in informal jobs. Street vendors, hawkers, urban farmers, etc have taken the front seat in the recovery process of the urban areas. “Salaried jobs hold a small proportion of urban India’s overall employment. Hence, the recovery in informal sector jobs has offset the loss in the formal employment,” Prabhakar Singh, Head-Institutional Business However, the impact of the salaried job loss takes some time to get absorbed into the system and it may show severe effects in the near-term.
While urban India was struggling with the disruptions in businesses and industries, the hinterlands were believed to be driving India’s growth towards recovery by July. However, in the month of August, the hinterlands faced two major roadblocks — a fall in the number of MGNREGA workers and weak farm activities. The CMIE data had shown that the employment in farming fell by 0.5 million in August and job losses in the rural non-farming sectors were to the tune of 3.2 million.
Meanwhile, the labour force expanded in urban India but shrunk in rural India. Also, the employment and employment rate expanded in towns and shrunk in the country-side. While the unemployment rate rose in both regions, it rose more in rural India.