WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

As West Bengal approaches voting day, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is increasingly bragging about having created 12 million jobs during her 10-year rule. Trinamool Congress (TMC) billboards in Kolkata laud her for drastically reducing the state’s unemployment rate. These claims fly in the face of some rather grim data that Mamata’s rivals are using to question her report card on employment and livelihood creation, especially for the youth.

As of date, the state’s employment exchanges have nearly 3.5 million registered job-seekers, having added 100,000 people in 2020 alone. Data from government departments indicates that over 200,000 permanent posts are vacant. Another 150,000 teaching posts in government schools are yet to be filled. If it’s any consolation, many states have done worse, including, for example, highly industrialised Haryana, where unemployment stood at a staggering 26.4 per cent in February 2021, according to the CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy). At 6.9 per cent, the national average for the same month was also marginally worse than West