GUWAHATI: When Assam minister Pijush Hazarika, who addressed the media in Guwahati on Saturday, outlined the steps taken by the Centre and the Assam government for youth welfare, he was singing a different tune in the campaign for the Assembly elections.
With only four days to go for the polling, this is an acknowledgement that the high-decibel pitch around the issue of infiltration and its traditional poll issues are not working and there could be an undercurrent against the NDA, at least not among the youth.
Hazarika wanted to convince the youth that the BJP government in the state was not just about rhetoric, but wanted to attend to the livelihood issues as well. He said that the new government under the BJP would surpass the 2021 electoral promise of generating one lakh government jobs to a target of exceeding two lakh jobs in the next five years.
“Over one lakh youth have received financial assistance exceeding Rs 1,000 crore, with a roadmap to support 10 lakh youth with assistance up to Rs 5 lakh each in the coming five years,” the BJP said in a statement quoting the minister.
The minister tried to tap the discontent of the urban youth by talking support to the start-up culture in the state. He noted that the present government had helped 615 start-ups since 2021, while the MSME sector witnessed 12.75 lakh units generating employment for over 82 lakh people, marking an unprecedented expansion of grassroots entrepreneurship.
The youth outreach is a decisive shift from the BJP’s agenda in the last two years, when it championed the cause of jati (community), maati (land), and bheti (foundation) and managed to polarise voters to an extent through eviction drives, targeting particularly the Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are addressed by the pejorative term “Miya”. Sources say that over 1.5 lakh bighas of land has been cleared of encroachment in the past five years, underlining the importance it attached to the eviction narrative.
Till recently, the BJP was going full steam with the same narrative, as Union Home Minister Amit Shah, as recently as on Friday, stated in Assam that the BJP government in its next term would drive out infiltrators, who have been identified in the past 10 years.
Observers, however, point out how the narrative game around infiltration may have peaked and not adding much to the BJP’s support base. Arguably, a majority of non-Muslim voters do not see eviction drives as negative campaigns, there has been noticeable anger and frustration among sections of people, particularly youth, over the alleged delay in ensuring justice for the larger-than-life music icon Zubeen Garg.
This section is unhappy also because the state government took six months to start the work for the development of the singer’s final resting place in Hatimura on the outskirts of Guwahati. Proceedings in a fast-track court for the trial in the high-profile case started only recently. What makes matters worse for the BJP is that Garg was a known critic of the party.
The “Justice for Zubeen Garg” campaign grew louder after chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the Assembly last year that the singer was “murdered”. While seven persons arrested in connection with his death continue to be in judicial custody, there is a feeling among the youth that they will walk out of the jail sooner than later, especially in the light of the Singapore State Coroner’s ruling that Garg had “accidentally” drowned, ruling out the murder theory.
Many social media users, particularly among the youth, criticised Sarma for levelling serious charges against the family of London-educated and Guwahati Central Assam Jatiya Parishad’s “Gen Z” candidate Kunki Chowdhury.