Despair, desperation over jobs in Bihar

BARELY had the dust settled on Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar that Gen Z youth staged protests in neighbouring Nepal and overthrew its government. The leaderless Nepalese protestors expressed their disgust at corruption, the government’s authoritarian ban on social media and a lack of concern for youth aspirations and public welfare. They targeted the ‘nepo kids’, the children of the rich who led an extravagant lifestyle, while the ordinary youth suffered.

In Bihar, Rahul’s yatra pushed the issue of democratic accountability in the people’s court, even as Bihari boys spouted the slogan of ‘padhaai-kamaai-dawaai’ — education, employment and healthcare.

The similarity of issues, the timing and the geographical proximity of a state and a nation lead to several questions about resentment of the youth against indifferent rulers. Can we understand the churn in Bihar politics through the prism of the Nepal protests? Have unemployment and widening inequality, combined with democratic backsliding, emerged as decisive factors in tipping the political scales? And what lessons does poll-bound Bihar draw from the upheaval in the neighbourhood?

Drawing on three years of ethnographic work in an urban gali in Patna, I have gathered accounts of ordinary Bihari youth’s struggle to avert unemployment. Youth unemployment has been very high in Nepal — quoted to be upwards of 20 per cent — whereas it is claimed to be on the decline in Bihar and now stands at 10 per cent. Yet, Bihari youth find it hard to overcome the odds, with no opportunities for meaningful education in rural areas. They flock to urban galis in Patna, where low-cost coaching centres proliferate.

These centres lure subaltern aspirants with the guarantee of success in bharti (recruitment) for government jobs. The centres are run in the name of their ‘sirs’ — Bipin sir teaches English to rustic Biharis, Guru Rahman promises daroga bharti and Goswami sir offers coaching in ‘sampoorna ganit’ i.e. ‘entire mathematics’. In the same gali, Samrat Ashok sir claims his lineage from the legendary Maurya dynasty ruler and offers a ‘dhamaka bumper’ offer for his course pack — what was earlier priced at Rs 3,500 is now offered at Rs 500, exhorting students to enrol fast.

The king of the gali, however, is Khan sir, a ‘youth icon’ who teaches with a pronounced vernacular accent, has his own YouTube channel and leads youth protests against paper leaks in exams for government recruitment. Over a thousand students sit through his lectures every evening, while many more sit outside the classroom and pay attention to him on TV screens. Others simply hang around to beg for photocopies of his lecture notes as they cannot afford even the ‘low fees’ for coaching. I am told that there are millions of ‘online’ students who attend Khan’s lectures on their mobile phones as they cannot afford the cost of living in Patna.

Dealing with unemployment is being accepted as an individual responsibility in Bihar (and elsewhere in India). Even as public sector employment is shrinking in neo-liberal India, its lure persists. It is seen as the only way out of the desperation of rural lives, immersed in hopeless agriculture.

The coaching ‘sirs’ themselves are unemployed young men of a senior generation, who are selling hopes to ordinary youth in a mad scramble for government jobs. Coaching is their self-employment and only avenue for self-respect in a society that stopped offering social mobility opportunities a long time ago. Hopelessness, joblessness and desperation are all being managed in this informal coaching enterprise as a project of hope for youth aspirations.

The critical difference between Nepali and Bihari youth is the missing climate activist, the rapper, the DJ in the Patna gali. Instead, Bihari youth are drawn to markets built on the promise of success — a phenomenon in which poor people themselves accept the retreat of the State and rely on shadow markets to lead them on.

Political protests, even over genuine issues concerning the youth such as contractual entry into the Army as Agniveers, are perceived as risky ventures for unemployed Bihari youth. There is a chance that they will be arrested and get ‘bad character’ certificates from the police, rendering them permanently unemployable. Better to bear the ignominy and run the mile every morning as part of physical training necessary for bharti.

Before the break of dawn, I visit Patna’s Gandhi Maidan — the city centre and nerve centre of its political history, replete with poetic calls for ‘singhasan khaali karo, janata aati hai’ — lines of Rashtrakavi Dinkar which became the rallying cry for anti-Emergency youth crusaders in 1975-77. There, I find thousands being trained by physical training coaches. Many young aspirants jog barefoot in the race for employment. No songs, no poets and no time for the politics of protests for these Bihari youth. And Nepal is not even a ‘guess question’ in the coaching textbooks there.

In this backdrop, Rahul’s yatra is an organised expression of the Opposition’s voice. It occupies a civic space of dissent, foreclosing Nepal-like possibilities.

Manisha Priyam is Distinguished Visiting Professor, Monash University, Australia.