Elections are the time when the voters are pampered. In the time of the Maha Assembly election of 2021, West Bengal is the most highlighted.  As the polling continues in parts of the state, CM Mamta Banerjee is on with her bragging for 12 million jobs created during her a decade rule. Trinamool Congress billboards in Kolkata laud her for drastically reducing the state’s unemployment rate. The rivals are using these claims in questioning her report card on employment and livelihood development.

According to the date fact, the state’s employment exchanges have nearly 3.5 million registered job-seekers, having added 100,000 people in 2020 alone. Data from the government department indicates that over 200,000 permanent posts are vacant. Another 150,000 teaching posts in government schools are yet to be filled.

Not defaming the fact that jobs were created in Bengal but bulk supports that maximum was contractual.

“For 2020-21, the government is spending around Rs 5,000 crore a month on the salaries of 800,000 government employees,” says a state finance department official. Despite the statistics of permanent government employees falling over the years due to the Sixth pay commission grades have been introduced and dearness allowance has been increased. The last Left Front government had spent about Rs 3,000 crore a month on the salaries of a million government employees and pensioners.

The contractual government services are divided into three parts:

·        Workers draw meagre salary but remain with constant leaves

-         3% annual increment

-         Retirement to age 60

- One-time grant of 3 Lakh on retirement

·        Rolls through a government agency

-         Lower-grade posts (clerk & peons)

·        No work No Pay basis

-         Home guard and peons

-         Data entry operators

According to a state finance official, what complicates the job hunt is that contractual/ casual positions are rarely advertised in prominent dailies and the ads do not always explicitly mention that the hiring is for the government.

#WestBengalElections: A group of BJP supporters attended PM Modi`s rally in Barasat yesterday with paintings on their bodies highlighting unemployment & requirement for industries in the state.

"We want Bengal to reach new heights. We want a change," one of the supporters said. pic.twitter.com/oJtqFyo8hR

— ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2021

Recruitments are often not transparent or can say biased. In 2013, the Mamata government announced it would appoint 130,000 civic police volunteers on contract to help with traffic regulation, crowd management, and other duties. This even as the police department was battling an acute manpower shortage and 37,000 sanctioned posts lay vacant. In 2016, the Calcutta High Court censured the civic police appointments as arbitrary. Citing the case of a police station in Bankura district, the judge hearing the case wondered how 1,464 candidates could have been interviewed and appointment letters issued to the successful ones within 24 hours. The court declared the entire recruitment void and instructed the government to streamline it.

Experts more kindly inclined to the cash-strapped state government’s efforts to mitigate the jobs crisis feel it deserves praise. “The government has ensured continuity of service for contractual staff, which is almost the same as holding a permanent job. Given the huge pool of unemployed people and the limited financial resources, the government adopted the strategy of providing jobs to as many as possible by accommodating three people against one post,” says Abhirup Sarkar, professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Sarkar has headed several advisory committees of the state finance department.

#MamataBanerjee`S Silicon Valley IT HUB, it was inaugurated in 2018 but till today no IT industry built any building even. This is West Bengal under @AITCofficial . No investment no job , no development. Only Cutmomey-jeevis are progressing in West Bengal. #BengalElections2021 pic.twitter.com/pMJCzC6DhK

— Tarunjyoti Tewari (@tjt4002) February 17, 2021

In November last year, Mamata announced that 16,500 primaries/ upper primary teaching posts would be filled from among the 20,000 who had cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test, but the pre-election move was stalled through a high court petition.

Apart from this, some 30,000 MPhils and doctorates are hoping to be impaneled as college teachers through the West Bengal College Service Commission. One such aspirant from Daspur in West Midnapore, whose wait has been four years long, alleges rampant corruption in the process. “In my village, ruling party leaders demand hefty bribes to get anyone impaneled, Rs 10-15 lakh for primary/ upper primary teaching posts and Rs 25-40 lakh for college teaching posts,” he says. A retired government employee in East Midnapore claims young men in his village had to pay lakhs to get civic police appointments. “First, they paid bribes to be recruited, and now give ‘hafta’ from their monthly salaries. Do you think they will still vote for the ruling party?” he asks.

Indrajit Ghosh, a leader of the CPI(M)-affiliated Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), alleges that recruitment scams are not limited to the education department and that even question papers of the West Bengal Civil Services (WBCS) examination get leaked. “The candidate who topped the 2017 WBCS exam had secured 13 marks in the prelims while the cut-off was 126. He was going to be appointed when a hue and cry put a stop to it,” claims Ghosh.

The job hunt has been equally arduous for scores of others. Around 1.3 million applicants to government clerical posts haven’t got a call since 2018. Another 600,000 who applied for the posts of police constable and sub-inspector haven’t had much luck either. Shrinking prospects have forced even the well-educated to apply for unconventional jobs, such as of dead body-handlers in the post-mortem wing at Malda Medical College in 2017. “Around 300 people had applied for two vacancies. Each one was a graduate and one out of every four was highly educated,” says P. Kundu, principal, Malda Medical College.

The young (age 18-35 years) make up nearly half of Bengal’s 100 million population. Jobs and credible livelihood options are what they aspire for rather than subsisting on government doles and allowances, such as the Yuvasree assistance under which 181,000 unemployed people are getting Rs 1,500 a month. One-time assistance of Rs 1,000 announced by the Mamata government last year benefitted 223,000 migrant workers who returned to West Bengal during the Covid lockdown. While over Rs 22 crore has been spent on the scheme, conservative government estimates put the number of migrant families at about 1.2 million. But a senior labor department official says the actual number of migrants could be as high as 3-4 million.

The Mamata government also runs livelihood schemes for the unemployed and has extended credit to 350,000 unemployed women to start micro-enterprises. Mamata’s thrust is on the IT hub at Rajarhat in North 24 Parganas. She has promised to bring in Rs 3,000 crore worth of investment and create 40,000 IT jobs.

Against this, the BJP is promising the youth of Bengal real economic empowerment and development through a “double-engine government” (BJP rule at the Centre and in states, like in Assam, Bihar, and Tripura). At the March 7 rally in Kolkata, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ashol poriborton (real change) will come to Bengal only when opportunities open up for the youth and there is an industrial resurgence. He announced that jobs will be created by wooing investors with modern infrastructure. “Amit Shah has already assured Bengal that employment will be a big priority if the BJP comes to power. Government employees will get Seventh Pay Commission grades and women 33 percent reservation in government jobs. Around 400,000 fishermen will be provided Rs 6,000 every year, like farmers,” says BJP leader Diptangshu Choudhury.

 But what about the common refrain among Bengal’s youth: ‘Where are the jobs?’

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