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By Ravish Kumar
A strange debate has taken root in Bihar. A debate between reel and rozgaar — between short-form video entertainment and real employment.
Rahul Gandhi calls reels an addiction. Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls them a source of employment.
At a recent rally in Bihar, the Prime Minister proudly claimed that his government made data cheaper, and as a result, Bihar’s youth are earning through reels.
It was meant to sound like a story of digital empowerment. In truth, it revealed the tragic distance between politics and the real lives of Bihar’s young generation.
The Cost of a Dream Called “Reel Economy”
If reel-making were truly a viable employment model, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar — who has ruled the state for nearly two decades — wouldn’t be distributing unemployment allowances and election-time stipends to women.
He’d be giving ₹10,000 to every youth to start making reels — because, as the Prime Minister suggests, Bihar’s youth can now “earn from creativity” thanks to cheap data.
But ask the young creators themselves, and a very different story emerges.
They tell you: one reel takes 5–6 hours to make, often shot under the sun or in the rain, edited painstakingly on a phone they bought on loan.
Their content gets views, but not revenue. Ad deals are rare, local sponsors pay ₹1000–₹2000, and platforms like Instagram don’t pay creators at all.
For most, “reel-making” is not an income — it’s an expensive hobby sustained by hope.
One student from Samastipur shared how he borrowed ₹32,000 from his mother to buy a phone, promising to pay it back from his “reel income.” Months later, he’s still in debt.
Cheap Data or Costly Distraction?
The Prime Minister claims data is cheaper than tea.
But the reality on the ground contradicts that. Over the past year, data rates have risen by 20–25%. Entry-level recharge plans have been scrapped by major telecoms.
Airtel’s ₹249 plan is now ₹299, and Jio’s basic 1GB-per-day plan doesn’t exist anymore.
When young creators say uploading a single video consumes 500–600MB, you realize that this “cheap data” narrative is detached from the ground truth.
It’s one thing to have mobile phones in every home. It’s another to have genuine digital empowerment.
Only around 43% of Bihar’s population has internet access, far below Kerala’s 70%.
Barely 1% of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and extremely backward-class households own a laptop or computer.
So even if data were free, how would Bihar’s youth turn it into employment when the basic digital infrastructure is missing?
The Barren Landscape of Real Jobs
Aditya Anand, a young professional from Munger, wrote a viral post on LinkedIn about this illusion of opportunity.
He called Bihar the perfect example of how India is squandering its demographic dividend.
In his words:
“Half the youth here are preparing for government jobs that never come. The other half are scrolling American apps on Chinese phones, cursing both countries while trapped in their systems.”
His observation captures the paradox: a state overflowing with youth energy, yet starved of opportunities.
Gyms are full, coaching centres are crowded, and reels are endless — but factories, startups, and meaningful jobs remain missing.
Politics of Distraction
From pakora employment in 2019 to reel employment in 2025, the slogans have changed but the reality hasn’t.
What remains constant is the government’s attempt to rename or reframe unemployment as entrepreneurship.
The Prime Minister says “reel-making is work.” But he doesn’t say which colleges, universities, or industries his government has strengthened to create real jobs.
He doesn’t explain why Patna University, established in 1917, still awaits central university status — a promise dismissed on stage eight years ago.
When asked about factories, BJP leaders say there’s no land in Bihar.
Yet, the same state provides lakhs of migrants who build cities in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Delhi.
The land is apparently too scarce for factories, but not for election rallies.
The Global Lens: Reels as Addiction
Rahul Gandhi called reels a “nasha” — an addiction.
And he’s not wrong. Globally, research is piling up on the psychological impact of social media reels: reduced attention span, rising anxiety, depression, and addiction among children and young adults.
In the U.S., parents have even sued Facebook and Instagram, blaming them for mental health issues in their children.
Yet, India’s Prime Minister celebrates the same platforms as vehicles of employment.
No country that takes youth mental health seriously would glorify an addictive technology as a source of national productivity.
The Digital Illusion of Employment
It’s important to understand that content creation is indeed an economy — but not one built by the Indian government.
It exists because of global platforms like YouTube, Google, Meta, and X.
Governments have, in fact, made this space more fragile through restrictive IT rules.
The 2021 amendments to India’s IT Act allow bureaucrats to order the removal of online content without transparent justification.
Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have challenged this in court.
This means even the little economic opportunity that YouTube creators or independent journalists found online exists under constant threat of censorship.
So, when the Prime Minister takes credit for “creating” a reel economy, it’s misleading — both economically and politically.
Bihar’s Young, Stuck Between Hope and Deprivation
Bihar is India’s youngest state — about 10% of India’s youth live there.
Yet, its unemployment rate remains among the highest.
For 20 years, one chief minister and one alliance have ruled, claiming “double engine” governance.
But what has that engine built?
Education remains in ruins.
Industries are absent.
And instead of modern universities or IT hubs, the youth are offered cheap data and motivational speeches about reels.
In a state where 98% of households lack computers, what sense does it make to talk about digital entrepreneurship?
The Real Question
The real question is not whether making reels is good or bad.
It’s whether the government can get away with calling it employment in a state that desperately needs factories, universities, and functioning institutions.
If reels are truly the future of jobs, perhaps our leaders should also quit politics and start making them.
They might discover, as Bihar’s youth already have, that likes don’t pay bills.
Conclusion: Between Red Light and Blue Light
Bihar’s nights glow with the blue light of mobile screens — not the lamps of study or the sparks of industry.
The young scroll endlessly, not out of joy, but out of boredom and helplessness.
Every reel is a cry of creativity trapped inside a system that refuses to open its doors.
The tragedy is not that Bihar’s youth are making reels.
The tragedy is that the country’s leaders now call it employment.
