The Maharashtra government is seeing a huge "diversity deficit" as the number of minority groups in state jobs has dropped over the last decade. While policies have increased the share of reserved categories, representation of Christians, Muslims, and Jains in government roles has declined.
Data from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics of the Maharashtra Government highlights this trend.
Overall Workforce Changes:
- Workforce reduced by 16% from 5.71 lakh in 2015 to 4.78 lakh in 2023.
- Approved strength: 7.24 lakh. Current shortfall: 34%.
- Only 377 employees per lakh of the population, despite 570 posts approved per lakh.
Reserved Categories:
- Increase in share: 68.4% (2015) to 71.1% (2023).
- Absolute numbers fell 13.3%, from 3.91 lakh to 3.39 lakh.
- The decline is smaller than the overall workforce reduction (16.39%).
Representation of Women:
- The share of women in government roles rose from 18.32% (2013) to 23.47% (2023).
- Increase in numbers from 1.04 lakh to 1.12 lakh.
Religious Minority Representation:
- Christians: Declined from 0.7% to 0.3%. Population share: 0.96%.
- Muslims: Dropped from 3.8% to 3.3%. Population share: 11.54%.
- Jains: Decreased from 0.3% to 0.2%. Population share: 1.25%.
- Sikhs: Remained constant at 0.03%.
- Parsis: Workforce grew from 15 to 23, a 53% increase.
Majority Group Representation:
- Hindus: Increased from 89.1% (2015) to 89.9% (2023). Population share: 79.83% (2011 census).
- Buddhists: Slight rise from 5.7% to 5.9%. Population share: 5.85%.
The state government has been cutting staff due to high salary and pension costs, which make up 35% of the INR 6.15 lakh crore budget. As per reports, in the state legislature's joint session, the governor announced plans to hire 153,000 new employees soon.
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