The burning issues like rising unemployment, price rise, inflation that affect daily life, has been pushed to the background as parties have brought to focus issues like Odia pride and tsunami of freebies like free electricity to woo voters in the coastal State.

It’s altogether a different election in Odisha as the poll managers are gearing up for the last phase of twin polls (for Lok Sabha and Assembly) on 1 June.

The daily fight for the common man and middle class to eke out a living at a time when price rise is pinching the pockets and jobless educated youths are forced to take up lowly engagement continues to persist in the State as lakhs of skilled and unskilled workforces head to other States on a daily basis for earning livelihood.

But the parties in the fray hardly dwelt on the ways and means to stop exodus from the State and provide employment in the comfort of the home State.

In the elections held in the past, the people’s common demands — jobs, health, ‘bijli’, ‘sadak’, ‘pani’ (electricity, road and water) — remained everywhere. But it is not the same this time as barely a week is left for the simultaneous polls to end.

As party-hopping and turncoats contesting the polls has become the order of the day in Odisha, voters are left with little choice to gauge the credibility of candidates. It’s the parties and their symbols that remain uppermost in voters’ minds to elect their representatives.

There is 41 per cent unemployment in Odisha as per the International Labour Organization (ILO) report, which is the highest in the country. The rate of inflation in the State also stays on the higher side. It has become a grim battle for survival for the people living on the fringes and the middle class. But none of the parties bothered to promise a permanent solution for the end of the plight, said Prabhat Rajan Nayak, a civil engineering graduate.

”Government jobs are few and far between. The government recruitment has virtually come to a grinding halt in the State. After I passed out in 2023, I sat idly in search of jobs. Six months back, I finally got an engagement in a private construction company at a paltry monthly salary of Rs 12,000,” he said.

”Majority of my classmates are either languishing without jobs or engaged in lowly-paid jobs like me. Technical Job scopes in Odisha are exceedingly scarce despite tall claims by the government. Only those migrating to other States are lucky to get engagements with decent pay packages,” Nayak added.

The Opposition BJP and Congress have raked up Odia pride to target Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for grooming VK Pandian, a Tamil, as his political successor. Their arguments of course carry weight and substance. But they have failed to project policy to give jobs to lakhs of Odia youths, a cross-section of first-time voters said.

The ruling BJD, struggling hard with strong anti-incumbency, has little to offer except 100 units of free electricity to domestic consumers, they added.

”Doling out freebies is no answer to ameliorate poverty and unemployment. Whichever government comes to power needs to give jobs to workforces and stop migration. If people become self-dependent, life will be better and livable for everybody. Free ration scheme may, however, be continued for the poorest of poor,” they observed.