From 35 to 21 Lakh in 30 Days: The Vanishing Jobless and Assam’s Vanishing Hope

In Assam today, unemployment is not just a statistic—it is a vanishing act. As of June 2025, the government recorded 35.73 lakh unemployed youths. By July, that number had mysteriously dropped to 21.18 lakh. No mass recruitment. No industrial boom. No public explanation.

A 14.5 lakh drop in joblessness in just one month? It sounds like a miracle. But to those living through it, it feels more like a mirage.

🎯 The Promise That Vanished

When Himanta Biswa Sarma became Chief Minister in 2021, he offered more than just political change—he promised one lakh government jobs within a year, positioning employment as his government’s moral duty.

Today, only around 60,000 have been recruited. The rest? Lost in bureaucratic dead-ends, recruitment freezes, or digital dashboards with no follow-up.

That promise, once made with thunderous confidence, now echoes back like an unanswered call—buried beneath events, speeches, and welfare slogans.

📊 From Data to Disguise

The June figure of 35.73 lakh was based on a broad dataset, drawing from employment exchanges, education departments, local surveys, and informal sector inputs. It offered—for the first time—a realistic, if painful view of the state’s youth crisis.

But the July data revision did something else. It narrowed the definition to only those “registered” as unemployed, quietly removing:

Unregistered rural graduates,

Gig and underpaid informal workers,

Returning migrants post-COVID,

Dropouts and discouraged job-seekers.

The result? A more comfortable number for political optics, and a deeper betrayal of the real situation.

🔥 Congress Reacts: From Silence to Strategy

The Congress party, long accused of being absent from ground issues, is now sharpening its focus on unemployment.

🧠 The Real Crisis: Employability, Not Just Employment

Even if numbers were honest, the core problem remains unaddressed: employability.

The Skill University remains incomplete.

Industry-academia links are absent.

Startup policies are urban-centric.

Technical education is choked by poor curriculum and corruption.

The government continues to host job melas, but without quality control or lasting absorption, most become symbolic gestures, not solutions.

⚫ The Black Future: A Silent Collapse

What do these 35 lakh (or 21 lakh) youth look like?

They are:

Engineering graduates driving autos.

Postgraduates working as delivery agents.

Trained nurses waiting for APSC interviews that never arrive.

Young women dropping out of the workforce entirely.

Behind every number is a life paused, a family worried, a future slipping out of reach. Unemployment is no longer a challenge—it’s a quiet emergency.

🧨 Conclusion: A Generation Betrayed

The truth is simple. The jobs didn’t come. The data did.

The promise was made, but the youth were forgotten.

If Himanta Biswa Sarma’s government wants to be remembered as more than just a welfare machine and law-and-order enforcer, it must return to the one issue that matters most: dignified employment.

And if Assam’s youth remain unheard, Assam’s future remains uncertain. The disappearing 14 lakh aren’t gone—they're just waiting. And watching.