May 11, 2021 Sharad Kendre graduated from a nursing college in Maharashtra’s Latur district eight years ago. But he is still waiting for an opportunity to use his skills, even as the coronavirus pandemic strains the state’s public health systems and forces health workers employed in hospitals to work long hours without a break. It has been over two years since Kendre applied for a government job. Maharashtra government’s Directorate of Health Services had announced in February 2019 that it was going to conduct recruitment exams to fill more than 1,500 vacancies for staff nurses and specialist nurses in public hospitals across the state.