 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India, a show by People's Dispatch where we bring you major stories from across the country, what Indians are talking about and the impact they will have on politics and society. On July 15, India's National Testing Agency began conducting the new Common University entrance test across the country. The entrance test known as the CUET is mandatory for those who want admission to any central university, some state universities and a few private ones. Almost 15 lakh students have registered. Earlier, the students would get admitted to these universities based on their final year results in school. The government says a standardized entrance test will benefit students, but students have concerns as do teachers. We spoke to Delhi University professor Abha Dev Habib about issues they are raising. See, the classroom students are a special batch. They were in class 10 writing their board exams, their big exam of class 10 while we ran into the COVID situation and there was a lockdown. And for the last two years, their education has been primarily through online processes. School education happens in a very diverse situation in the country. We have a very heterogeneous system from very small schools, which are very ill-prepared. They do not have proper funds to very posh schools. Now, I mean, in whatever situation like every year, the schools did their best and the students did their best to cope up with the new situation and they were ready to get class 12 board exams when it was announced that admission to all central universities will happen through CWET. Now, what are your central universities? You know that central universities have the mandate that they are open to all students. These are only around 45 universities across the country, which will take this time admission will be through CWET. Now, in these 45 universities, actually the mandate is that they will have to respect every student. All our students are given their chance and on the basis of their class performance, admission was given. Teachers and administrators have warned the policy makers against such a big centralized examination because we understand that as soon as you have a big centralized examination, the coaching mafia enters the whole scene. It is controlled by the coaching mafia and parents have to besides their education system, besides giving fees to school and to the education institution, they start paying for the coaching. So, right now we hear that 14 lakh students will appear in CWET and the first phase of CWET has just started after much delays. It has just started on 15 July and the next phase will start around 4th of this and on the very first day, it has been reported in various places that only 85% of students could take their exam. You know that one was that mismanagement that students reached their centers just to understand that last minute an email in the night has been sent that the center has been moved to another place and cutting across the city, they had to rush to the new place. For some students, there was no possibility to move to the center. Also areas like Assam are completely flooded. There are heavy rains in various parts of the country. And across the country also, once again, we do not have the data to say how many students found the centers to be very, very remote or not so well connected to their places. And I think with time this data will emerge on the social media and students will share. So, there is a diverse condition and through by bringing CWET, the government has actually been, has discriminated against students who are in villages, who are in suburban areas. The other thing is that while your board exam and all happen around the, you know, it can be in Hindi or it can be in other languages. And, you know, it caters to the diverse needs of the student. Through it exam, the UTC claim will happen in 13 different languages. But if you look at the performer which they had uploaded through which the student had to apply, that was only Unemployment particularly among young job seekers is a major global issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. India with one of the largest working age populations is unfortunately no exception to this crisis. According to the latest estimates from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, 13 million people lost their jobs in June this year. The job situation has become a chicken and egg story. While the job market shrinks, it is matched by a steady decline in the number of people who are actively looking for a job. Here is a report on what brought us to these worrisome circumstances. Hi, we get into discussing the causes of this crisis. I think we need to I need to mention that what you see in the statistics on employment tends to understate the problem with the extent of the crisis. Now that said, why are we facing this crisis? Why do we have a crisis of employment? Now, I think to understand this one needs to look at two aspects of it. One is that given the general deceleration of economy in particular of sectors other than agriculture, you see a lot of workforce has been shifting back to agriculture, been dependent more and more on agriculture for employment. And if you look at the recent trends in agriculture, the crisis in agriculture has been building up. I do not think it can be explained only on the basis of, you know, a specific situation caused because of delayed monsoon. I think we have a much bigger crisis because of other structural things that have been happening in the economy. For example, the crisis of fertilizer, which has actually resulted in a significant reduction in area of crops being sown and people shifting to less fertilizer intensive crops, which also happened to be less labor intensive crops. So there is a contraction of employment in agriculture, which is a result of decline deceleration in agriculture, which is a result of the way, you know, the economy has been thrown out of gear, you know, post pandemic, but also because of disruption that have happened in the global supply chains. And the fact that, you know, global supply chains are controlled by big monopoly corporate producers, who control things like fertilizer supply and so on, and are using this situation, you know, so, you know, compounding the situation created by things like Russia, Ukraine war, and using it to their advantage to, for example, create much bigger crisis than would happen if they were not controlling the supply of such raw material. Now, this comes on top of a situation where, you know, for a fairly significant period of time, the major sort of expansion of employment in non-agriculture economy has been of precarious employment. And a general deceleration of the economy has resulted in a situation where there is a contraction of even this kind of employment. So even the precarious employment that was available to people has tended to has seen a contraction. So one is that the quality of employment has become poorer, which has pushed people to accept whatever, you know, whatever jobs you get, you know, however low paying they are, however coercive they are, however difficult they are, however unremediative they are. But a contraction of even those sectors have meant that people who used to, for example, drive over taxis and so on are now jobless, because there is simply a contraction of demand. There is a big impact of economic deceleration in general. The economic crisis that one is seeing is sort of compounded in its effect on employment. That's essentially why one finds that there is actually a continuing and in some sense a worsening crisis of employment in India. Puticherry on the east coast of India along the Bay of Bengal is the largest and most populous district in the eponymous union territory. Fishing, localized and small scale is a historically important source of income and sustenance for its people. But Puticherry, fish of oak face dire conditions. Pollution particularly from plastic overfishing and other factors have made their catches smaller than ever. It is forcing fish of oak to go further out into the open seas in the hope of a decent yield. It puts their lives at greater risk. Most of the roughly 15,000 fishing boats in Puticherry are powered by small diesel outboard motors. When they buy diesel to run these motors, the fishermen pay a substantial road tax even though obviously they do not drive their boats on roads. This is their story. That is why we have to give diesel to the fishermen. We do not drive our boats on roads. We do not have to pay the tax. If we give diesel to the fishermen, they pay no tax. It would be better if we gave diesel to the fishermen. A small amount of money, a minibus of 18 cr, a minibus of 2,000 cr, a minibus of 5,000 cr, a minibus of 20,000 cr, a minibus of 30,000 cr, a minibus of 50,000 cr. If we give it to the fishermen, they pay no tax. This is the reason why the government does not give this amount of money to the fishermen. We did not ask the government to give us the money. We give diesel to the fishermen for Rs. 24 tax and at least they give us Rs. 12 tax, as the government gives 500. We need to buy a boat. We go and get ! We have to take the oil from the bank and sell it to the bank. If we buy it, it will be a huge struggle. In that, we have to buy a car. Many people have gone to the sea. For the development of this area in the past, the use of the fishing rod, the fishing rod, and the fishing rod was used. But the government has decided to make this area into a fishing rod. They have no way of completing it. They have lost their livelihood. In the name of fishing rod, money has been wasted. Nothing has happened. In the same way, the government has decided to pay the people. This is not right. If the government wants to make this area into a fishing rod, it will be a good place to sell the fish. Now, they have used this place in a wrong way.