The perception and prestige associated with government jobs is incredible in our society. It is definitely good but when it overshadows the general concept of social status and people start looking down upon those who do not have a preference for a permanent job and rather decide to explore other options, it becomes a problem. It is, in fact, the shade of colonial culture still persisting in our societies.
What makes a society progressive is how we perceive how individuals are contributing in different capacities. The mistakes we commit as a society are not the failures of individuals but the consequences of a collective design that rewards conformity over depth.
We, as a society, have affixed some sort of superiority to government jobs which is actually a psychological bottleneck in the way of equality and progress and it demeaning a wide range of options that could become incredibly successful ventures. Consider India’s journey since 90s, there has been a tremendous economic growth. The reasons simply being that bottlenecks in form of extreme government control were removed. More space was provided to private players. Privatisation paved way for more efficient utilisation of both human and other resources.
An interesting read- ‘The Tyranny of Merit’- reveals the astonishing experience how people beyond formal education can contribute for betterment of society.
Let us delve further into intricacies of negative ramifications of undue craze for government jobs. The hiccups remain basically in structural loopholes of our society. There is a limited appreciation given to people who actually do something innovative and imaginative instead of treating creativity as the highest possible effort deserving of appreciation. Qualifying competitive exams with mere mugging up of facts in no way determines the real potential of a person.
Writing a book — an act of imagination and intellectual labour rarely receives the same social celebration as qualifying for a government job that may have nothing to do with creativity. This signals to young learners the path they are expected to take: obedience over originality, ticking boxes rather than thinking outside them. Our education, reduced to job-training, fails to make us well-balanced citizens.
Society is Responsible
One of the biggest social ‘fiction’ in Kashmir is the belief that the ultimate proof of learning is a government job. Our schools, our families, even our peer networks orbit around this arbitrary thought. Talent, creativity and independent thought carry little weight if they don’t end with an appointment letter. Education gets reduced to memorising facts for an exam, and learning is judged by the salary slab it fetches.
There is a rising trend of psychiatric issues among young students although attributed to multidimensional flaws of society and evolving complexities of times. But in our society major reason responsible is undue pressure on children for aspiring to be government servants whose success ratio is merely few percent leaving a large proportion with a sense of worthlessness and psychological burden.
Herbert Marcuse warned of exactly this in One-Dimensional Man: a society that flattens the richness of human life into a single plane of consumption and production. Michael Walzer, in Spheres of Justice, offers an alternative vision: different spheres of life have different standards and no one metric should dominate them all. When love, education, art, public service and even personal dignity are measured by the same yardstick — “does it lead to a government job?” We distort reality and breed frustration.
I Too Deserve a Respectable Living
The structural loopholes of society and general perceptions of people need a paradigm change. To build a truly humane society, we must cultivate an evolved civic sense, a way of looking at others through a lens of respect and mutual recognition. Every person who contributes to the social fabric deserves dignity, whether their work is intellectual, manual, or artistic. An electrician who wires our homes possesses a skill most of us lack, acquired through discipline and practice. A mason who lays the foundation of our houses makes possible the very spaces in which we live and dream. A hairdresser shapes our appearance with artistry that many “white-collar” professionals could never replicate. These occupations require as much mastery and dedication as any office or government job, yet they often go unacknowledged.
Recent events, like the closure of NH-44, have shown this starkly. Watching fruit merchants and growers struggle to move their harvests, I realised the extraordinary risk they bear every season. They have developed the resilience to manage mammoth production and sudden financial shocks. Could we, in our comparatively protected professions, endure such uncertainty? Probably not. As a society we more rely on business leaders.
Social Perception Needs a Change
M.K Gandhi called this the “Dignity of Labour” — the principle that no honest work is inferior and that all forms of labour sustain the nation. Physical labour is not subordinate to intellectual labour; both are essential forces that uphold the collective order. Salaries may differ, that is the material side, but what truly matters is the non-material dimension: the dignity, respect, and fair treatment accorded to every occupation. Recognising this truth is not an act of charity but of civic maturity, a necessary step toward a society where contribution, not social label, defines worth.
Our educational and social frameworks cannot be rigid; they must adapt to existing realities. One way to begin this transformation is by broad-basing the goalposts of education, creating space for critical and creative thinking to guide how we adjust our affairs. Respecting divergence in learning styles and ambitions is not a luxury but a necessity.
At present, much of our system revolves around a single, parochial goal: securing a government job. This fixation limits the imagination of learners and creates a bottleneck in aspirations. The world, however, offers ample opportunities for those willing to innovate. Albert Einstein’s famous remark captures this beautifully: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” By setting a single benchmark for success, we deny students the chance to discover their own talents.
There are countless examples of how stepping off the singular path leads to new heights. Entrepreneurs like N. R. Narayana Murthy or Falguni Nayar or else reshaped entire sectors by thinking differently.
It is our collective responsibility to redefine our social perception of perceiving government jobs as only reliable end. Under societal expectations many young people get trapped and pursue cracking government jobs when their true interests lay beyond, creating a vacuum for innovation and creativity. Focus should be put on our youth who do wonders beyond cracking mere exams. They are the true wonderful leaders who get out of the clutches of this tough society and steer their passion to the things they really wish to do.
Authors are Teachers in Department of School Education J&K.
