Bengal unemployment aid scheme | Queuing up for cash
Queuing has become an essential feature of democracy in India: for food rations, to sign up for a government scheme, to vote. Queues outside local government offices are becoming increasingly frequent in West Bengal.
Within days of millions of residents lining up for special intensive revision (SIR) and trying to prove themselves as genuine voters, young people in West Bengal started waiting in queues again from Sunday (February 15).
As of February 17, the line has been extended. Thousands of people gathered at the Banglar Yuba Saathi registration camp at Geetanjali Stadium in eastern Kolkata. Anjali Shaw (25) organizes her documents at the registration camp. “It would be better if we got a job instead. Given the state of the job market, there’s not a lot of hope at both the state and national level. But this money is a huge help for now,” he says. Anjali graduated and was working in a private company but lost her job.
On February 5, West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya tabled the budget for the year 2026-27 in the State Assembly. The budget announced a new cash incentive for unemployed youth in West Bengal, months before the West Bengal Assembly elections. Banglar Yuba Sathi.
A Yuva Saathi registration center at Kasi Bose Lane in North Kolkata. | Photo Credit: Shrabana Chatterjee
“Under this Scheme, those who have passed Madhyamik (class 10), are unemployed and are not covered under any social security scheme of the government other than educational allowance or scholarship, will be entitled to monthly assistance of ₹ 1,500 till they are employed or up to 5 years, whichever is earlier,” the Finance Minister said in the State Assembly amid cheers of MLAs of Treasury Benches.
for money
Government sources say around 2 lakh people filled the forms on the first day of the camp. The number of young people enrolled in the program in one weekend reaches millions. There are graduates, postgraduates, even those with an MBA degree.
“My brother is doing temporary work. Even though he is a graduate, he does not have a regular income,” says Suman Mondal, who helped his brother fill out the Yuva Saathi registration form at the Geetanjali Stadium.
In the Mondal family, Suman’s wife and mother also receive a monthly allowance of ₹1,500 each under the West Bengal Lakshmir Bhandar scheme, a direct cash transfer welfare scheme for women. They hope that the total of ₹4,500 will help make life easier in their home.
The state government has made an additional allocation of ₹ 5,000 crore in the budget for the scheme. While the scheme was planned to be implemented from August 15, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered that camps be set up across the state from mid-February and the first cash installment under the scheme be deposited in accounts on April 1.
Some men and women were accompanied by their parents at the registration centre. A father waiting in line on behalf of his son at another Yuva Saathi center says, “Who wants to stand in line and collect unemployment insurance benefits? But this is the reality.”
Sampa Bhattacharya, mother of a 20-year-old college student waiting in line, says: “Everyone in our area comes here to queue up and get their share of the scheme. I get Lakshmir Bhandar, my daughter doesn’t get it. So it’s good for her.”
Banglar Yuva Saathi’s registration camp in North Kolkata’s Kasi Bose Lane is located in a smaller area than the Geetanjali stadium, but the number of rows is disproportionate to the location.
Besides the Yuva Sathi Registration desk, the authorities also set up a Lakshmir Bhandar registration camp. This is a cash incentive scheme for women under 60 years of age in West Bengal. Announcements are made over loudspeakers asking anyone who has “still not registered for Lakshmir Bhandar” to “easily sign up at the local desk.” Women are striving to be at the forefront.
political moves
Local Trinamool Congress MLA and Minister for Industries, Women and Child Development Sashi Panja is regularly present at the camp to ensure that people register for unemployment benefits without any problems.
“A lot of people say it’s a political move. But we’re not forcing anyone to take it or sign up. It’s optional. We’ve seen a huge response so far. Thousands of people are coming every day to sign up,” says Panja.
West Bengal Assembly Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari called it a “horrible sight” of people queuing for unemployment benefits and said the Trinamool Congress government was not in favor of job creation.
The new Banglar Yuba Sathi will face the same fate as the Yuva Shree scheme, which was launched in 2013 to provide pocket money and jobs to 17 lakh applicants, the BJP leader added. Adhikari said the scheme has been effectively terminated since the financial year 2017-18 without allocating any funds.
Slot Surface It is not the first cash incentive scheme launched by the Trinamool Congress. Five years ago, before the 2021 Assembly elections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme.
In the budget presented on February 5, 2026, Ms. Bhattacharya increased the monthly allowance under the Scheme by ₹500 per month. Now women in the general category will get INR 1,500 per month, while women in the reserved category will get INR 1,700 after the increase.
Stating that the scheme is the brainchild of Chief Minister Banerjee, he said that the scheme will cover 2.42 crore women, which will cover almost half of the entire female population of West Bengal. The increase in Lakshmir Bhandar will impose an annual burden of ₹ 15,000 crore on the State exchequer.
Economic development has different connotations for different classes of people, says economist Abhirup Sarkar. “For the poor and destitute, this means two meals a day, adequate and clean water supply, painless travel on village roads, electricity, free education, easily accessible low-cost healthcare and, if possible, a home the family can own,” he says. These are seen as developments. “In addition, if there is a cash transfer, no matter how small, there is a sense of relief and even empowerment,” says Sarkar, explaining how outreach programs work.
Contract police work
Despite the excitement over the new cash stimulus plan, there was little emphasis on job creation in the 2026-27 budget.
However, Ms. Bhattacharya announced that the salaries of contract staff will be increased by ₹ 1,000. “There are more than 1.25 lakh civic volunteers, village police and green police workers in the state who are doing a commendable job in helping Police Administration. To appreciate their contribution, I am happy to offer an increase of ₹ 1,000 in their monthly salary,” he said.
This has raised concerns about whether the police will seek to increase their contractual power. Following the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital and Medical College on August 9, 2024, the accused and later convicted person was revealed to be an undercover police volunteer with easy access to the hospital.
The Supreme Court was outraged by such recruitment and while hearing the case on October 15, 2024, had directed the West Bengal government to clarify the “source of authority” under which civilian volunteers like Sanjay Roy, an accused in the RG Kar rape and murder case, were employed, especially in sensitive areas such as schools and hospitals.
A panel from the then Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said recruiting political aides and sympathizers as ‘civil volunteers’ could be “a fine process of giving political patronage to people who are not at all verified”.
However, these jobs provide people with some income. A volunteer plainclothes constable from the state’s Jhargram district (who did not want to be named) says the ₹10,000 salary he earns at the end of every month is not enough to support his family. When he started working in 2013, he was earning ₹2,800.
“Most of the civilian volunteers in our district need to do something. We have small plots of land to grow vegetables, otherwise we won’t have money to put food on the plate with such a small salary,” he adds. He works 27-28 days a month and gets only 14 days of excused leave a year. He has no money to save for medical emergencies, for retirement, or for his children’s higher education.
He is ashamed that his wife and mother take money from Lakshmir Bhandar to run their household. “We are desperate. I’m not proud of accepting free cash from the government. So what else do we have? In the past, if one member of the family worked in the government, the rest of the family lived a normal middle-class life,” he says.
Sanjoy Poria, State President of the West Bengal Civilian Police Association (WBCPA), says that in 2013, plainclothes police volunteers led a movement demanding better working conditions, minimum wage, health insurance and recognition as permanent workers. However, in 2014 he and many others like him faced suspension for allegedly organizing “politically motivated” protests against the State. Poria is still under suspension to this day. Currently, Paschim runs its own ambulance service in Keshpur area of Medinipur district.
“We wrote to all political parties; no one came to help us. The movement fizzled when they put pressure on us. Do you see civilian volunteers demanding better working conditions or better wages? The movement was killed. We wanted very basic workers’ rights,” adds Poria. Several civil and village police volunteers, on condition of anonymity, said that with agricultural wages falling to £300 a day and sometimes even lower, the only option they had was to migrate to metropolitan cities in other states for work.
Although the involvement of local plainclothes police volunteers has been useful for the West Bengal government in managing conflicts in left-wing extremism-affected areas, there are frequent reports of plainclothes police volunteers being used by the ruling political party in local elections and illegal activities such as extortion. The involvement of plainclothes police personnel in the death of student leader Anish Khan in February 2022 had also sparked outrage.
Civil volunteers provide a political base to the Trinamool Congress, says Biswanath Chakraborty, professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University. “There is no proper process for appointment of such personnel. This leaves the local Trinamool Congress leadership appointing personnel who will be loyal to them,” says Chakraborty.
“A civilian volunteer has no police authority,” says retired IPS officer Nazrul Islam. He is talking about Sanjay Roy, a rape and murder convict at RG Kar Hospital. Roy had a police motorcycle and accommodation, which was not included in this squad’s salary.
Public jobs in West Bengal have been hit in the wake of school recruitment scam and municipal recruitment scam, which have meant re-examination and hence postponement of jobs. There were protests on the streets of Kolkata demanding permanent jobs as people, mostly young people, lined up for the cash-for-unemployment scheme.
