Long years back, when I was posted in Bihar under the Lalu regime, a Bihari friend had told me, “To understand Bihar, you must realise that Bihar is more a state of mind than reality.” Looking at the poll promises floating around, I am reminded once again of this statement, especially for the fabulous promises made by the RJD. Its leader is the Mahagathbandhan alliance’s CM candidate Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, the worthy son of Lalu Prasad, who had presided over the state’s Jungle Raj of 15 years, when state-patronised kidnapping and extortion were the state’s only thriving industries.

I have first-hand experience of seeing how, under his watch, the state had completely withered away in the Marxist sense. Tejaswi was also briefly in the seat of power, twice as deputy to Nitish Kumar, first in 2015 for some 17 months and again in 2022 for 20 months, when Nitish hobnobbed with the RJD before returning to NDA after citing allegations of large-scale corruption against Tejaswi and the RJD. Tejaswi, who was unable to lure enough Biharis with his promise of only 10 lakh government jobs to vote him to power in 2020, has raised the stakes much higher this time, promising to enact a new law within 20 days to provide one government job to each family in Bihar within 20 months.

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Bihar has about 10 lakh regular government employees and roughly an equal number of contract employees. As per the last caste survey conducted by the Nitish government in 2022, it has a population of 13 crore and 2.7 crore households. If we discount the existing regular employees, there are still an additional 2.6 crore jobs to be created within 20 months to fulfil Tejaswi’s promise. At the lowest pay scale, a government employee in Bihar earns about Rs 30,000 per month. At this rate, the promise would cost the exchequer a humongous annual sum of Rs 9.36 lakh crore – more than thrice its entire budget of Rs 2.94 lakh crore for 2025-26. Tejaswi, who himself has never passed out of school, is probably unaware that it is not the government’s business to give jobs but to facilitate........

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