VADAKARA, KERALA: There is an air of earnestness about the slim figure in a black-and-white kurta sitting on the wooden bench near the entrance, clutching her backpack tightly in front of her, occasionally biting her fingernails. Aishwarya Das, 21, has journeyed 30 km from her home in Koyilandy in north Kerala on a Tuesday morning to the office of the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) in Vadakara, Kozhikode, in the hope that it will lead to a job at its offices, possibly in the accounts department. “There is no job security in my current job,” says Das, a commerce graduate, who has been selling insurance for a public sector bank for the last three months. The daughter of a single mother who works as a beautician and cannot afford to support her education any more, Das would like to find a steady job with a regular income. Her hopes are pinned on a letter of recommendation from her MLA, which she and her mother have been waiting for hours to hand over to the cooperative society’s chairman.
