NEW DELHI/PATNA: Ajay Sahni of Kurdhani village in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district has been sitting idle for the last six months. He used to work in Delhi as an electrician and led a fairly comfortable life, until March end when the lockdown was ordered.
“There is no scope of employment in the village nor did I get any work under the MGNREGA or any other government scheme,” Sahni said.
To make ends meet, he was forced to sell fish sometimes to earn a few rupees. Mahesh Sah of Ratnali village is also in the same boat. He returned from Mumbai where he worked with a textiles firm.
“We managed to return in April but have not got a single man day’s work with the MGNREGA so I now work as a farm labourer.” Sahni and Sah are not isolated cases of migrant workers unable to get any meaningful employment.
A majority of the 22 lakh migrants who returned to the state have not managed to get jobs, adding to the already growing unemployment in the state.
Not surprisingly, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United), the top three contenders in the ongoing Bihar elections, have all made unemployment a major talking point, and for good reason.
As per the recently-released Reserve Bank of India report, the ‘Handbook of statistics on Indian States 2018-19,’ the unemployment rate in Bihar has risen steadily in the past 15 years.
(See graphic 1)
While the urban unemployment rate was 64 per 1,000 in 2004-05, it went up to 105 in 2018-19. Similarly, the rural unemployment rate went up from 15 to 102 in the corresponding years.
The data has also revealed that, barring the Northeast, Bihar is the only state where the unemployment rate has crossed 100.
The number of industrial workers has also decreased in the past four years, indicating that factories have fallen on bad times.
While there were 1.25 lakh workers in 2014-15, the number fell to 1.04 lakh in 2017-18.
(See graphic 2)
As Nitish Kumar took charge as the Bihar chief minister in November 2005, he is vulnerable on this front. Sensing this, the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav has left no stone unturned to take advantage.
In the manifesto released on Saturday, the party promised that if voted to power, giving 10 lakh jobs would figure in the first cabinet meeting.
The “process of recruitment of 10 lakh permanent jobs, including 4.5 lakh vacant posts during 15 years of (the) NDA regime and generating 5.5 lakh more posts in the first cabinet meeting” is a promise, the party manifesto said. The Congress, part of the mahagathbandhan, toed the RJD’s line, promising Rs 1,500 monthly to all unemployed youth in its manifesto released earlier this week.
Not to be left behind, the BJP has promised to generate 19 lakh jobs in its ‘sankalpa patra.’
The manifesto promised “3 lakh new appointments of teachers in educational institutions in the coming one year,”
“5 lakh IT jobs in the next five years by developing the state into a new IT hub,” “job opportunities to 1 lakh people in the health sector” and “10 lakh agriculture-linked jobs.”
BJP spokesperson Prem Patel said the party was concerned at the high unemployment rate and vowed to provide employment opportunities to 1 crore women through self-help groups.
The JD-U, in its manifesto, talked about empowering the youth through “better technical education so that they can get employment opportunities in the state and even outside.”
“We want our youth to be self-reliant. While we fill all the vacancies in the government and create more jobs, the focus will be to encourage young entrepreneurs,” said senior JD-U leader Ajay Alok.
Lack of jobs at centre stage in Bihar polls
Even the Lok Janshakti Party’s vision document, ‘Bihar first, Bihari first,’ has mentioned building a web portal where job seekers and employers can connect directly.
That unemployment has taken centre stage in Bihar where traditionally caste and community tilt the scales during elections was underlined in a recent survey by Delhi-based thinktank, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
It said the number of voters worried about jobs had more than doubled, from nine per cent in 2015 to 20 per cent in 2020.
It also said that unemployment was the second- most important issue in this election.