India, Oct. 11 -- Promises during election campaigns ought to be taken with more than a pinch of salt - although they are still important because they give us an idea about the larger worldview of the political parties and politicians making them. It is against this backdrop that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav's promise of giving a government job to a person in every household in Bihar ought to be evaluated. The numbers are beyond ridiculous. According to the caste survey conducted by the Bihar government in 2023, the state had 130.7 million people spread across 27.6 million households. Only about two million people held government jobs in the state, according to the data, some of which will be central government jobs. Now, if Tejashwi is to keep his promise, the state will have to increase the number of government jobs by a factor of almost 13, which, in turn, will increase the government's salary bill by a similar multiple. In 2025-26, Bihar's spending on salaries is budgeted at Rs.54,697 crore. This number multiplied by 13 would be more than Rs.7,00,000 crore. This is more than twice the total budgeted spending of Bihar in 2025-26, which is Rs.3,16,895 crore. To be sure, this is an underestimate of the spending involved since pensions have not been counted here. Money is not the only problem here. Unless one is talking about really low-paying government jobs, where the trend has been to outsource to private providers, Bihar will find it difficult to find people to hire. According to the 2024 calendar year Periodic Labour Force Survey data, the share of graduates in Bihar's 18-35-year-old labour force - population working or looking for a job - was just 12.9%, almost half of what this number is in the rest of the country (23%). The numbers are lower for Scheduled Castes (7.4%), Scheduled Tribes (9.4%) and Other Backward Classes (12%), which the RJD claims to be its core social base. The short point is that Bihar neither has the money nor the skilled workforce to roll out what seems to be Yadav's promise of utopian managerial socialism. The promise is so bizarre that it seems the announcement is not based on even some bare minimum diligence within the party. One can dismiss it as election rhetoric - the RJD is not the only party to make outlandish promises during an election campaign - or think of it as a sign of the intellectual bankruptcy of the primary pole of political opposition in one of India's most populous and economically backward states. Tejashwi's father and the founder of RJD, Lalu Prasad, is one of the central characters in the politics of social justice in India. His political success was based on mobilising the socially discriminated against entrenched feudal oppression. However, Lalu Prasad mistook the means of radical caste mobilisation as an end, whereas the goal should have been to reinvent Bihar's moribund economy. It is this failure that has prevented Lalu Prasad and his party from winning office on their own in Bihar for two decades now. This historical challenge cannot be overcome by making outlandish promises. To be sure, the current government has not exactly changed the state's fortunes. Democracy, in its ideal form, should not be vulgar sloganeering to animate a mass of precarity. It should be driven by a genuine urge to make people's lives better by making considered and informed policies. Promises such as providing a government job to every household in Bihar are an unfortunate reminder that it is mostly the former variety of democracy that is still around in our country....