Job crisis & note ban: How Bengal is losing its demographic opportunity

The jobs crisis is one of India's leading election issues as the country heads into general elections during the summer of 2019

The son of farmers for whom farming was no longer viable, Tapan Das left home 20 years ago. Today he is 42, illiterate, earns about Rs 4,000 a month working on construction sites--Rs 3,000 if you deduct the rent he pays for a mud house without electricity and water in an illegal slum.

Sometimes, his wife and he survive on fena bhaat, a watery, boiled rice. His two children get a more nutritious lunch at the local government-run anganwadi or creche here in India’s 7th most populous city. “I and my wife, somehow we manage,” said