Indians cannot live by Hindutva alone.

The tacit acknowledgment was made on Saturday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressed a button in Delhi to green-light the distribution of 75,000 appointment letters in 50 centres across the country.

Couched in an event named Rozgar Mela or employment fair, the government is filling vacancies in various central government departments — which is not the same as creating jobs. The vacancy fill-up was projected as a “Diwali gift” from Modi to the youth.

But what the event, despite the hype and show that bore out the moniker of “Mela”, ended up emphasising was the country’s dismal job scene ahead of several key state elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The event comes just as electioneering has picked up in the BJP-ruled states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, with Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to vote in Assembly polls next year.

The Congress alleged that the government had withheld the appointment letters for months to facilitate Saturday’s spectacle without thinking of the anguish the delay would cause to the candidates.

The mela does not mean that the bread-and-butter issues of roti, kapda and makaan is replacing Hindutva as the main plank.

On Saturday, Modi seized the opportunity to obliquely underline his commitment

to his religion, apologising for being late and saying he had got delayed while returning from his pilgrimage to Kedarnath and Badrinath. The event, scheduled for 11am, began about half an hour late.

The “Diwali gift” of jobs and Modi’s widely publicised pilgrimage that preceded it are being seen as part of a carefully crafted strategy to influence voters by emphasising the Prime Minister’s personal image and indirectly linking “welfare” to religion.

In the afternoon, Modi joined an event in Madhya Pradesh through videoconferencing to “hand over” homes to beneficiaries of the housing scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.

On Sunday, Diwali Eve, Modi will be back burnishing his Hindutva credentials.

Modi will participate in lamp-lighting and prayer in Ayodhya, where a Ram temple is being built. On Monday, he will be celebrating Diwali with the armed forces, highlighting his commitment to muscular nationalism.

The administration advertised this tranche of 75,000 jobs as the first step towards the fulfilment of Modi’s promise to provide 10 lakh government jobs by the end of next year — just ahead of the general election.

Modi had in June instructed his government to recruit 10 lakh people in “mission mode”, amid Opposition criticism over the rising joblessness.

Official estimates point to more than 9 lakh vacancies across the various central government departments, many of them unfilled for years. Unemployment had peaked during the height of the pandemic, with the government freezing the recruitment process.

Modi participated in Saturday’s event from Delhi through videoconferencing while his ministers fanned out across the 50 centres to hand over the appointment letters. The Prime Minister’s pressing of the button to launch the Rozgar Mela, and his address, were live-streamed on many platforms.

True to his penchant for symbolism, Modi said the 75,000 appointment letters represented the 75 years of independence. He went on to justify the distribution of the letters at one go at a “mela”.

“We decided that a tradition of giving appointment letters at one go should be started so that a collective temperament of completing projects in a time-bound way develops in the departments,” he said.

He added that the practice would be repeated in the coming months and that the NDA-ruled states had decided to hold similar Rozgar Melas.

Sidestepping the high unemployment rate, Modi claimed that Saturday’s exercise was a milestone in his government’s campaign for “employment and self-employment” over the past eight years.

He blamed India’s economic woes on the “global situation” and the pandemic, while suggesting the country was under his leadership trying to emerge stronger from the adversity.

“It’s a fact that the global situation is not very good. Several large economies are struggling and problems like high inflation and unemployment are at their peak,” he said.

“The world was hit by a once-in-a-century pandemic and its side effects will not go away in 100 days. But despite this world crisis, India is taking new initiatives and even some risks to remain strong.”

Adding to Saturday’s image-building exercise, Jitendra Singh, junior minister in the PMO, said that Modi fulfilled every promise he made and went on to add a variation to the “Modi hai toh mumkin hai” (Modi makes everything possible) slogan.

“Aap (Modi) hai to sab mumkin hai (With you everything is possible),” he said.

Jitendra’s was a rare ministerial speech from the Rozgar Mela centres to be live-streamed.