In young voters, aspirations slowly turn into anxiety
At 54.9 million, young men and women in the 18-30 age group constitute 36.5%of the total voters in the ongoing assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Gorakhpur: Uttar Pradesh is home to 54.9 million young men and women who are in the 18-30 age group. That is approximately36.5%of the total voters in the ongoing assembly elections.
For an overwhelming majority of this cohort, the 2014 Lok Sabha and the 2017 state elections were all about aspirations. Contrary to what many believe, development was perhaps a bigger tailwind for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 2017 campaign than Hindutva. Today, these aspirations are giving way to anxiety.
These young men and women are desperately waiting for development and increasingly becoming worried by the winding down of state capitalism, which also means drying up of government jobs at all levels. The mediocrity of the education offered in most of the state, which does not boost employability in the private sector outside the state, has not helped.
At Barakhal village in the Medhaval assembly constituency in Sant Kabir Nagar district, HT met a bunch of young women who study in a new college near their village. One of their teachers present in the meeting described the predicament these students face.
“Students in our college start with dreams of cracking the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission), but they eventually settle for a government school teaching job,” he said, declining to be named. The disappointment on the face of the Geeta Maurya, a young Kushwaha woman in response to whose answer that she was doing B.Ed this comment was made, was palpable.
While private capital has not been forthcoming – young men going to other states for work is the norm – young students and their families have invested beyond their means to get education that will get them a job.
A two year B.Ed degree, essential for a schoolteacher’s job, costs around ₹1 lakh. This kind of money is close to, or even higher, than a year’s income for many of these families. “The BJP government has hired around 1.75 lakh schoolteachers in the last five years, whereas around 2.5 lakh students take admission in B.Ed programme every year,” a teacher in a government college in Gorakhpur said on condition of anonymity.
There is a joke in Uttar Pradesh that if you throw a stone randomly, it is likely to hit an unemployed B.Ed degree holder, he said.
To be sure, the Uttar Pradesh government runs a post-metric scholarship scheme, which helps in meeting this cost. The government has spent more than ₹600 crore on this programme in some years, and more than a million students, studying in government or private colleges, get a tuition fee refund under the programme.
While this is practically a subsidy for private colleges, the quality of education offered does not go much beyond a mere degree. Many private colleges give admissions to students without taking fees in advance, and are more than happy to take the amount when the money finally comes, the government college teacher said.
Schoolteachers in waiting are not the only anxious lot. There are many who are preparing for all kinds of government jobs — army to police, railway to staff selection commission (SSC). The army aspirants run to brighten their chances, the SSC and railway aspirantskeep taking all kinds of coaching to help their cause.
Vacancies are either getting delayed, or the hiring process drags on forever, often caught in court cases and cancellation of exams or withholding of results. This, along with the government’s proposed plans to privatize public sector companies is exacerbating these fears. If there is one narrative that is hurting the BJP in these elections, it is that every public sector unit will eventually be sold by the BJP government at the Centre.
In some ways, this is undermining the virtue of education. At Mirzapur Pakri village in Paniyara constituency in Maharajganj district, a young Muslim boy doing his BA and preparing for competitive examinations had to face subtle ridicule from two young men of the same religion, who dropped out of school after standard six.
“What’s the point in studying? Anyway there are no jobs. We have become electricians and will go to Saudi Arab eventually. You can save ₹25,000-30,000 per month there,” they said. “We will wait till he is still eligible (of an age) to try for government jobs and only then explore the Saudi route,” the first boy’s father said.
However, the road to oil-rich west Asian nations is not so easy. People often pay tens of thousands of rupees to agents who promise high paying jobs, and many end up being short-changed, or worse, simply cheated.
Those from the socially deprived sections are more worried with the drying up of government jobs. “Most of us are first generation learners, our parents cannot teach us like the rich upper caste people. This means we do not have a strong base like their children,” rued a young Dalit man from Bagapar village in Maharajganj Urban constituency. “Government jobs reducing also means reserved jobs coming down. What will we do then?”
A lot of young people voted for the BJP in 2017 hoping for an economic revolution. At Barakhal, Vinod Yadav, who works at a denim factory in Surat, thought a double-engine government would bring industries to Uttar Pradesh like it did to Gujarat.
But that has not happened. He voted BJP in 2017 and says he will vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP) this time. This does not mean he is trusts the SP to provide jobs, but that he is simply going back to his old social alliance after feeling let down by the new choice he made in 2017.
At Belva Bujurg village in Paniyara assembly constituency in Maharajganj district, HT met two young men. The first, a Yadav by caste, has finished his BTech from a private engineering college in Gorakhpur. He paid around ₹5 lakh in fees and could afford it because his father works in Kuwait. For civil engineering, which is what he did, there are no placements, he said. “I am hoping to get some experience first before getting a proper job,” he said.
The other, a Patel by caste, was doing a BPharm, paying around ₹50-60 thousand in fees. “Even if I do not get a job, I can at least open a medicine shop,” he said.
While both young men agreed on the employment crisis, their political take on the issue differed. There was large-scale corruption and jaativad (caste bias) in giving jobs during the SP government; the BJP is not the only one who has created this problem, he said.
This put the vocally pro-SP Yadav boy on the defensive. “I am not saying SP is flawless, but there should be some competition in politics,” he argued.
The common lament in this election, as far as the young voter is concerned, is that there is no political party that appears to have a plan to solve the massive employment crisis. Whoever comes to power, they say, this issue is unlikely to be resolved.