By HH Mohrmen
It looks like the elections to the Bihar State Assembly will largely be decided by the votes of young electors. It is now crystal clear that unemployment is not only a state issue but it is a national problem and it is compounded by government not giving due attention to this vital issue. Governments at both the national and the state level need pay more attention to this issue not only to enable young people to be gainfully employed, but more importantly to help build the economy of the country.
In the current election to the Bihar State Assembly, 24% of the voters are in the age group of 18 to 29 years and this includes the 5,79,035 first-time voters in the age group of 18 to 19 years. Studies show that this in fact does not represent the correct number because most of the eligible new voters were not able to enrol themselves due to the lockdown and the disruption of the electoral process due to the coronavirus pandemic. In spite of that, job creation became a major factor in the elections and the two major contenders in the battle for Patna compete among themselves to woo the young voters.
Political parties on both sides of the spectrums recognise the fact that the young population has now become an important constituent in the election. Tejashwi Yadav the RJD leader was the first to promise 10 lakh government jobs if the grand alliance is voted to power. Not to be left behind the BJP too which initially criticised the RJD of promising voters the moon, also followed suit in the later part of the campaign and promised to generate 19 lakhs jobs if voted to power. The BJP and its alliance in the centre will do itself a favour if it gives more importance to job creation sooner than later.
At the state level many regional political parties in Meghalaya still do not see job creation beyond government services. Hence very recently the UDP and the KHNAM rather than coming up with ideas of how to create jobs, instead demanded for extension of eligible age for applicants to apply for government jobs. The question is how many unemployed youths do we have in the state and how many of them can be accommodated in government services? The regional parties should get real and do themselves a favour by working hard to explore avenues which will help create more jobs for the young population in the state.
The need of the hour is to help create employment beyond government jobs; in this regard it can be said that the NPP-led government is at least moving in the right direction by launching a program named Promotion and Incubation of Market-driven Enterprise or PRIME-Hub. 37 percent of the little less that 30 lakh population of the state is in the age group of 15-34 years. Of the 29.7 lakhs population of the state 80 percent live in the rural areas and depend on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihoods, so these are very important features to consider while coming up with a policy to create jobs.
Building on the institution created by the previous MUA government the Meghalaya Basin Development Authority (MBDA) and Meghalaya Institute of Entrepreneurship (MIE), the new government’s approach to job creation is to first build an ecosystem for social and economic growth in the state. Considering the fact that (Medium Small and Micro Enterprise (MSMEs) are the backbone of economic growth and job creation, the government ushered in the Meghalaya Entrepreneurship Promotion Strategy 2020-25. Small states like Meghalaya can only accommodate small businesses and the new approach is based on the existing strengths of people which include organic agriculture-horticulture products, nature and eco tourism, indigenous handloom, handicrafts and pottery and of course the social capital of the respective communities that is already very strong.
The objective of establishing institutions like MBDA, MIE is to change the development narrative in the state from subsidy-based, government-program driven approach to credit-linked enterprise through advocacy and IEC campaign. From experience one can say that this is a very challenging task because the grant-culture and subsidy-based system has engulfed the whole development ecosystem in the state. Consider this fact that in some cases people even expected to be paid to attend the concept seeding of the project or for that matter any government awareness program.
The other unique approach in the MBDA development model is to explore avenues of convergence across development departments. A case in point is horticulture department is promoting growing of fruits and vegetables but value addition and marketing of the produce was never in the plan. Marketing and adding value to the produce is the responsibility of the Industries department, but is there any opportunity of convergence amongst the departments?
Trying to ensure that departments converge rather than operate in silos when the goal is the same is still a challenging task. The approach of the different departments is to execute the job by spending the funds sanctioned and to send the report after the job is done. Monitoring the impact of the project is almost nil; neither is there any mechanism to measure how much the project has impacted the intended beneficiaries and there is almost no follow up to see whether the goal of the project is achieved. The challenge of convergence is also the question of which of the participating departments involved in the project get the credit after the project is executed. This is often the bone of contention when two or more departments engage in the same project, but is it really important who gets the credit as long as the goal is achieved?
PRIME Hub is an approach which intends to guide entrepreneurship development in the state and changing the mindset of the youths by making entrepreneurship a preferred career choice for them. This approach also takes into consideration the importance of the four pillars to build an enterprise which include credit, technology, skills and markets. The earlier approach did not give due importance to the pillars and how they are linked to each other in entrepreneurship development. An entrepreneur may have the skills, the required technology and even a ready market but if one cannot access credit then it becomes a non-starter.
As per the document, entrepreneurs are being divided into three segments namely, Startup Entrepreneurs, Nano Entrepreneurs and Livelihood Entrepreneurs. Livelihood entrepreneurship is a segment at the local level such as agriculture, horticulture, sericulture, apiculture etc., that are feeders to the start-ups and the effort is to increase the productivity. The initial approach is to promote producer groups (PG) and clustering of villages based on the common produce or activity of the people in the area.
The attempt is also to support Nano entrepreneurs at the local level which could be regular, non-innovation or imitation based producers that employ two or more people. The third segment is a Startup entrepreneur who innovates or adds value to the produce and employs more than 20 people. The goal is to set up 50 PRIME Hubs at the District Headquarters and Blocks; support 250 Startup entrepreneurs, 7000 Nano entrepreneurs and 22,000 livelihood entrepreneurs in the span of five years from 2020 to 2025.
This looks like a holistic approach to development because it takes into consideration all development projects and agencies working in the state. The attempt is not only to encourage government departments to work on a convergence mode, but to also consolidate other government projects and program like Meghalaya Livelihood and Access to Market Project (Megha-LAMP), 1719iteams and the National Rural Livelihood Mission to work together. M-LAMP’s main focus is supply chain and enterprise development, and rural finance by introducing Integrated Village Cooperative Society (IVCS) which help improve financial inclusion and rural folk access to financial services.
But this project will also be partially successful if the SHGs promoted under National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) by Meghalaya State Rural Livelihood Society (MSRLS) across the state are not included. The service of 1719 Iteam should also be used to improve transport of goods from the villages. Then there is also the Piggery Mission which was recently launched hence convergence of all the departments or agencies which work for job creation or uplift of rural economy is of utmost importance.
This is the first time that the state government has taken a comprehensive approach to economic development where all the actors in development are incorporated. Hopefully the plan will not only to create the much needed jobs for the young people of the state but it will also ultimately lead to economic development of the state.