In one of his historic pledges, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-leader Tejashwi Yadav on Wednesday promised permanent government jobs to community mobilisers under the Jeevika self-help groups flagship in the state and regularisation of the employees of more than 150,000 contractual workers, prior to the Bihar assembly elections. Delivering a speech to a large crowd, Yadav termed the pledge as historic, claiming that the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had taken advantage of Jeevika Didis, rural women who volunteered to help with the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, and also contractual workers by denying them a sense of dignity and livelihood despite playing a significant role in the actual implementation of village-level social welfare schemes.
He promised that an ordinance would be enacted within 20 days after the swearing in of the RJD-led government with the full implementation to be undertaken in the next 20 months. Yadav stressed youth and women employment in the alliance with the emphasis that Bihar has the highest rate of unemployment, which is now estimated at more than 7%. To overcome possible fears regarding fiscal viability, he cited the achievements of regularisation of over 450,000 contractual teachers during his tenure as Deputy Chief Minister in the years 2015-2017, denying the promise by the BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi that such measures were not viable.
Yadav detailed the benefits of the Jeevika community mobiliser such as a monthly salary of 30,000, interest-free loans already in existence, two years of free interest, an extra 2,000 monthly allowance on inter-departmental work, and 5 lakh life insurance. The honorariums of other important Jeevika functionaries including bookkeepers and cluster coordinators would also increase considerably.
Jeevika was set up in 2007, and has empowered more than 14 million rural women in Bihar with the aim of making them financially inclusive, building their skills and community based projects. Yadav asserted that his government would acknowledge their efforts and compensate them, which would give them stability, dignity and long term benefits to these frontline rural workers.