AA Edit | Focus On Jobs Welcome As Bihar Readies To Vote

As Bihar is set to go to the polls next week, the promise of freebies is shining. There is nothing surprising in competitive bidding this time for the votes for the people of Bihar except that the two alliances have brought jobs into focus, with the Mahagathbandhan having led the way in promising one government job per family and NDA virtually forced to follow suit in talking of creating one crore jobs in five years.

It remains to be seen whether such a scenario as being projected by the rival alliances will indeed fructify, but the promise of jobs itself may be striking a chord in a state that has been inured to seeing a majority of its working age people make an exodus in search of jobs through the length and breadth of the country.

If there is one thing today that is being more avidly sought than the traditional triple of ‘roti, kapda and makan’, it is jobs for the youth within one of the country’s least developed big states. If the one job per family promised by the MGB seemed lofty enough, it has been compounded by talk of bringing a new law guaranteeing employment, which will be a first in India if it were to happen.

The MGB manifesto came with the regular vow to bring back the old pension scheme, besides 200 units of free power per household and a monthly allowance of Rs 2,500 under a “Mai Bahin Yojana” scheme for women. With the advantage of being in power, the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government had already opened the purse strings to give women handsome monthly payments through the “Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana”.

The startling cost to the exchequer seems hardly to raise any qualms about the practice of giveaways that may have been a boon in the lives of the not so well off, but it is a bane to the treasury that has been known to be near empty in many of the states that went recently to the polls while they keep borrowing to close the gap between revenue and expenditure.

Piquantly, this sensitive issue of the people of the Bihar workforce handling jobs that are generally the lesser paying ones raised hackles down south too as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was upbraided by Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin for suggesting that members of the Bihar workforce were being abused by DMK leaders who were the very ones being invited to campaign for the MGB.

While it is true that some DMK leaders had been rude to Bihar’s migrant workers in degrading them as ‘panipuriwallahs’ and toilet cleaners, the chief minister took up the issue saying the PM was losing the dignity of his position, which was that of the Prime Minister of the nation. Much of this could be dismissed as inspired by the vile politics that the nearness of polls inspires except that the issue should be about respecting the dignity of labour.

There is little doubt that the biggest anxiety facing Gen Z is about jobs, careers and a life to live and not enough of them are around to cater to the growing number of youth. If the working age people are leaving the state it is a reflection on the state of Bihar. But, at least, the creation of jobs is being talked about now thanks to political parties being in the combat zone for votes.