Bihar just came back from the brink of bankruptcy; in fact, it has narrowly missed being there. Another entitled prince had made a recklessly irresponsible promise of providing 10 lakh government jobs on the first day in his office if elected and the enthralled voters ~ especially youth who have come back home after losing their jobs in the wake of the pandemic ~ almost elected him to the high office.

Nothing excites the Bihar youth as much as the promise of a government job. There are few other jobs available, which is why they had to go to other states to seek them in the first place. Then came the sudden lockdown, and thousands of mostly unskilled workers had to migrate home from every nook and corner of the country ~ often walking miles on empty stomachs.

The prospect of never having to leave home again if they could find a job here was too alluring to vote blindly for someone, forgetting his inheritance of the legacy of jungle raj from his father. Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, the prince who would probably lead the state someday, does not have the imagination, discipline or training even to realise the absurdity of his promise. The entire media and self-appointed experts went gaga over him, mistaking his promise of dole with development backed by the army of psephologists who predicted a meltdown of the ruling dispensation. Eventually, however, all those who predicted certain doom for Nitish Kumar, the Vikas Purush whose idea of vikas (development) could not go much further than power, roads, water and a little law and order during the last 15 years, were proved wrong in the end.

Tejaswi Yadav needs to have some understanding of his state’s economy and finances. Let alone government jobs to 10 lakh people, Bihar is not yet able to provide the basic minimum public services to its 12 crore people. It remains overwhelmingly dependent on Central grants and its share of the divisible pool of Central taxes; these two together account for 75 per cent of its total revenue, the highest among the major states. Bihar’s own tax and non-tax revenues can barely meet even a quarter of the state’s expenditure.

As of April 2020, as per statistics given by the state Finance Minister, Bihar had 3.10 lakh state government employees, besides 3.80 lakh pensioners. Their salary and pension bill together come to an astounding Rs 4,880 crore every month. During the Lalu regime, the number of government employees rose to 7 lakh when the state sank deeper and deeper into debt for paying their salaries. At the prodding of successive finance commissions, it has reduced the employee numbers and its revenue account has since become healthier ~ in fact since 2004-05, Bihar had a consistent surplus in its revenue account.

With Tejaswi’s extravagant promise, the state would sink neck-deep into debt and an inevitable financial collapse, especially when the economy has been badly battered by a ruthless virus that shows no sign of abating. With additional 10 lakh government employees, the state’s entire revenue of Rs 1.5 lakh crore, including its share of Central taxes and grants, won’t suffice even to foot the wage bill of its employees. All development will then come to a grinding halt, marvellously paving the way for a reincarnation of the Jungle Raj, version 2. About the integrity of the process for recruitment for such huge numbers of employees, given the RJD’s past records, the less said, the better.

Tejaswi needs to be reminded that Bihar is still primarily dependent on subsistence agriculture, with more than 75 per cent of population deriving sustenance from its meagre share of 18.7 per cent in the state income, making agriculture extremely unproductive and unremunerative. With 8.2 per cent share of manufacturing as against the national average of 15.1 per cent, it is no wonder that most Bihari youth cannot find employment within the state. Consequently, Bihar has the lowest labour force participation rate of 40 per cent among 15+ age group as against the national average of 50 per cent, while it supplies labour to the other industrialised states of India.

One of the youngest states in India with a third of population below 14 years of age who will join the job market in the coming years, Bihar has the country’s second highest youth unemployment rate ~ 31 per cent for the 15-29 age group, compared to the national average of 17 per cent; lack of jobs within the state will force the youth to migrate en masse. Nearly a quarter of the youth never having completed schooling and hence lacking any employable skill, they will have to seek employment in poorly-paid lowskill jobs. At a mere 5 per cent, Bihar’s share of college-going students in the country is also among the lowest ~ partly because most leave the state early, either for job or for higher education.

Its health and educational infrastructure remain among the most backward in the country. Constraints of revenue shows up in the quality of delivery of public services ~ in 2017-18, Bihar spent only Rs 570 per capita against the national average of Rs 1081 on transport; Rs 517 against the national average of Rs 1098 on health and Rs 2079 compared to the national average of Rs 3286 on education. Its per capita income of Rs 47500 in 2018-19 was less than one-third of the national average, as it was even five years ago. Indeed, Bihar has a lot of catching up to do. Of its 38 districts, as many 13 find place among the most backward 117 districts in the country identified by NITI Aayog in 2017 on the basis of poverty, poor health, education and basic Infrastructure deficit.

With effect from April 2016, Nitish imposed a strict policy of prohibition accompanied by draconian laws for its violation, which deprived the state of its excise and sales revenue from alcohol amounting to Rs 4500 crore ~ a huge amount for a poor state. It was an unmitigated economic disaster with doubtful social benefits, as smuggling of alcohol and bootlegging became rampant. About 1.3 crore litres of smuggled Indian Made Foreign Liquor were seized by the state till Sept 30 this year; during the run up to the Assembly elections alone, the Election commission had seized liquor worth Rs 25 crore.

About 3.1 lakh people were booked for violating prohibition, mostly from the poorest classes. They are languishing in jails pushing their families to the verge of starvation. About 40000 bail cases have added to the huge pendency of High Court cases, clogging an already dysfunctional justice delivery system. If Nitish had earned some goodwill from rural women, it soon evaporated when their menfolk landed in jail and in the anger of the educated urban middle class who rue such intrusion into their freedom. Nitish may claim that the women voted for him in this election which ultimately gave victory to the NDA because of this policy, but it is likely that they voted for him more for providing bicycles to the girl child and reservation of seats for women in Panchayat elections ~ both delivered during his first term ~ rather than for prohibition.

For prohibition to succeed, education and awareness are much more powerful tools than a state diktat. Many other states, Tamil Nadu for example, tax alcohol heavily and use the revenue to drive many social welfare programmes that benefit the poor. In 2017-18, Tamil Nadu earned RS 26,797 crore from excise and VAT on alcohol, which financed more than 90 per cent of its entire social sector expenditure of Rs 29,543 crore. Even a developed state like Gujarat has sought compensation from the Finance Commission for their prohibition policy.

The cognoscenti also went gaga over the absence of explicit references to caste and religion during electioneering, interpreting it as the coming of age of politics in Bihar by supplanting the politics of identity with politics of aspiration and development. Actually, far from it.

Deeds mean more than words, and in the distribution of seats, each gave most seats to their caste vote banks ~ RJD to Yadavs, JDU to OBCs, and BJP and Congress to upper castes. LJP’s ploy cut the JDU votes by fielding upper caste candidates against them; indeed reduced their seats significantly. Bihar will still take a long time to come out of its caste mould. In the end it seems what has saved the NDA and Bihar from imminent bankruptcy was Narendra Modi’s charisma, because the NDA manifestoes also looked equally unimaginative, which included a promise of 19 lakh jobs across different sectors over five years.

Nitish promised another version of his earlier Saat Nishchay which now looks like stale wine in a new bottle. It would be interesting to see how the newly elected government fulfils the promise of 19 lakh jobs ~ for this, they will have to reinvent governance with ideas which are unlikely to emerge from its existing administrative bureaucratic set-up.