Indian Railways Spearheads Employment Generation

Bhubaneswar: The Indian Railways is a significant employer in the country. During the years 2014-2023, in the last nine years, Ministry of Railways has undertaken several initiatives to improve and expand the railway’s infrastructure all over the country. These efforts involved significant investments in new projects, technology adoption, and up gradation to the existing facilities. With these efforts not only the transportation services has improved and enhanced in the country, but also generated lakhs of direct and in-direct employment opportunities. During the period of 2004-2014, a total 4,11,000 jobs were created. However, in the span of only 9 years, between 2014- 2023, about 5,00,000 people were employed in Indian Railways. These people were appointed as Asst. Loco Pilot, Station Master, Train Managers, Junior Engineers, Technicians, Commercial Clerks, Track Maintainer, Pointsman, Assistants in various railway departments. More than 1.5 lakhs aspirants were employed during the last year only. This encouraging figure was possible despite of the 2 years long terrible period of Covid-19 and its aftermath. During Dec-2020 to July-2021, Railways have successfully undertaken the mammoth exercise of conducting world’s largest computer based/online recruitment exam. A total 2.37 crore candidates appeared in these exams. It is noteworthy that the whole exam process was fully transparent and corruption free. During the last five years lakhs of indirect jobs were also created through the industries which are serving with steel, ballast, cement, bricks, etc. for the railway’s infrastructure works. Employment generation with track laying works: On an average for construction of 1 km track around 33,000 man days of employment is generated annually. Hence, the Man days generated per day was 90.41. On Indian Railways, about 5600 kms track was constructed in last one year. Hence, total man days generated per day was 5,06,301 (more than 5 lakhs). Besides this Indian Railways is working on infrastructure works at vast scale like OHE, Signaling, PUs and PSUs, Station redevelopment works are involved for generation of employment. This has generated around 10 lakh indirect jobs in one year. On an average for infrastructure work in Railways, there is 3.5 times effect on the economy. Hence, these 10 lakh indirect jobs further creates 35 lakh indirect jobs in different sector. Capital Expenditure: Highest ever Capital allocation of 2.6 Lakh Cr has been made for infrastructure development during FY 2023-24 by Indian Railways. The expenditure up to Sep’ 23 is Rs. 150444 Cr (58% of the Budget Grant) against Rs. 102881 (43% of Budget Grant) up to Sep ’22 i.e., an increase of 46% over last year. This has helped in generating employment on Indian Railway.

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