India General Elections 2024: ‘PM can’t even account for 2L jobs, forget 20 cr’

The national spokesperson for Rashtriya Janata Dal RJD and Rajya Sabha Member Prof Manoj Kumar Jha known for his impassioned oratory engaged with midday on several pertinent issues concerning Bihar He reiterated the pressing need for granting special status to Bihar to address the challenges of deteriorating infrastructure including health judicial education floodaffected belt etc In his 30minute discourse he directed criticism towards BJP heavyweights by evoking the 2002 Gujarat riots countering the lsquojungle rajrsquo label associated with Bihar during Lalu Prasad Yadavrsquos regimeEdited excerpts from an interviewWho is your prime ministerial candidateManoj Jha We the people of Indiahellipthatrsquos the prime ministerial candidate Did we know in 2004 who will be the prime minister This Constitution does not talk about face Prime minister is the first minister in the cabinet thatrsquos it If you weave a narrative around an individual that individual will become a dictatorYoung Indians are worried about their future because there arenrsquot adequate vacancies in government sectors How will RJD or the INDIA bloc address this ticking bombFrankly speaking our main agenda in Bihar and largely for INDIA bloc at the national level has been around jobs Unfortunately the Prime Minister when he campaigned for BJP in 2014 had promised two crore jobs per year which is now 20 crore jobs in the last 10 years He cannot give data on even two lakhs forget 20 crore It is the reason the youth is utterly frustrated today They have no future to look forward to What can they do They have no other optionUnfortunately again the Prime Minister does not talk about employment and economic social justice He is not talking about these issues Instead he is indulging in discourses such as ldquoBijli kaat dega bhains khol lega mangalsutra etcrdquo which further frustrates the youth because as of now India is looking at its most difficult period in the history of unemploymentThere are 30 lakh vacancies and you are not filling these posts And there is the possibility to create more jobs Tejashwi ji prepared a blueprint to create one crore jobs in one go You need political will and commitment to the ethos of this book called the Indian Constitution but it is completely lacking in BJPrsquos ideology philosophy as well as their campaign strategy Thatrsquos why when I see a worried youth I get equally worriedWe will not let the Prime Minister move away from the core issues such as jobs inflation giving one lakh rupees per year to poor women reducing LPG price recruiting for the Railways and Agniveer If the INDIA bloc is given a mandate we will resolve these issuesHow will you address farmersrsquo issuesFirst of all farmers of different scale have varying issues Relatively big farmers have separate sets of issues small and marginal farmers have separate sets of issues and agricultural labourers have a separate set of issues But there are some issues in common Letrsquos call MSP Maximum Support Prices not lsquominimumrsquo for more than 10 to 15 crops across states Secondly lets forge a straight relationship by ensuring that farmers get every support in time at a subsidised rateAll infrastructures including health education judicial are crumbling in Bihar North Bihar is completely devastated every monsoon Whatrsquos the reasonThe biggest challenge Lalu ji faced during his regime was to set a social order because of the grammar of dominance A kind of feudal arrangement was extremely prevalent in Bihar he unsettled this People who had never voted since 1952 began voting Analyse political parties and their structures before and after 1990 and you will find that BJP had a different kind of leadership thenUPA 1 came to power in 2005 onwards and Lalu ji was the cabinet minister He ensured that investment came to Bihar Road networks were widenedmdash Raghuvansh Prasad Singh was the Rural Development minister and Laluji was the Railway minister Today we have two Railway factoriesmdash Madhepura and Chhapramdashin BiharBihar was practically left with no sustainable resource revenue after the bifurcation of the state And since then we have been demanding special status We are not holding a begging bowl we have been demanding our right Our nation cannot progress unless you address Biharrsquos concerns The state needs special attention Everyone is happy that Bihar supplies maximum number of labourers to Mumbai Punjab Haryana Tamil Nadu But what are we getting This state has simultaneously witnessed drought and flood We need a Central state at a massive scaleWhat do you have to say about lsquojungle raajrsquo for which Bihar was infamous during RJD regimeHave you checked the social profiles of these netas you are quoting Have you checked the NCRB data during our regime and subsequently Donrsquot fall victim to these stereotypes Somebody pees on the face of a human in Madhya Pradesh but why does nobody call it lsquojungle raajrsquo This is a typical caste lens to view leaders from Dalit and backward communitiesKidnapping was an industry during Lalu Prasad Yadavrsquos regime How would you woo voters todayCan a popular leader ever support a lsquokidnapping industryrsquo Lalu ji is a mass leader Modiji is scared of him because of his popularity He changed the narrative in north India The dominance of five per cent of the population went down and they are still hurtingWhat would you call Mr Amit Shah and Mr Narendra Modirsquos regime People have not forgotten 2002 Gujarat riots