The NDA’s promise of one crore government jobs in Bihar ahead of the Assembly polls rings hollow if the vacancy of teachers in schools is taken as an indicator.
The ruling alliance’s announcement marks an over five-fold increase in the 19 lakh jobs that it had promised in 2020.
According to official data, Bihar had 2.78 lakh vacant teaching posts in government schools in 2023-24. (See chart)
Arun Kumar, president of the All India Federation of University and College Teachers Association, said nearly two lakh teachers had been recruited in Bihar when the RJD and JDU had come together to form the government for more than a year.
In May this year, state education minister Sunil Kumar had said 80,000 teachers would be recruited, but the process is yet to take off.
On September 19, 2020, then Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had informed the Lok Sabha that Bihar accounted for 2.75 lakh of the 10.6 lakh vacant teaching posts in state government schools across the country, accounting for a 26 per cent share in vacancies — the highest in the country.
In 2020, the RJD had promised 10 lakh new government jobs if voted to power, while the BJP had pledged 19 lakh jobs overall.
Prof. Sunil Ray, former director of A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, said the promise of one crore jobs should be backed by data and a road map.
“The NDA parties should give data on how many jobs they have created in the last five years. They must give a blueprint on how one crore government jobs would be created in the next five years. Otherwise, these are hollow claims,” Ray said.
He said the data about teachers’ vacancies spoke volumes about the government’s misplaced priority on jobs and quality education.
“The least that the government could have done to provide jobs is to fill up the vacant posts. That has not been done. The standard excuse is that qualified candidates are in short supply. It means the colleges and universities are offering substandard education and the graduates are not competent to become schoolteachers,” Ray said.
He said the Opposition Mahagathbandhan must also draw up a plan to provide government jobs to every family as promised.
Ray suggested policy changes to encourage small collective entrepreneurships at the local level.
“Bihar has a large number of unemployed youths. Depending on the local ecological and social conditions and the availability of resources, these enterprises can be started in sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, education, food processing and trade,”
he said.
The emphasis should be on food processing and agriculture marketing, given the fact that Bihar’s economy is largely farm-based, Ray proposed.
Prof. Jitendra Sharma, a retired professor of a teacher training college in Rajasthan, said vacancies were bound to affect the quality of teaching.
“In a state like Bihar, where the quality of education is poor, the government must have a policy to fill up the posts regularly, every year, so that the quality does not suffer,” Sharma said.
