No jobs, no vote

Rakesh Kumar has a post-graduate degree but works as a house painter in the small town of Kasba Bonli in northwestern India.

The 31-year-old, the only one of eight siblings to attend university, said his attempts to get a salaried job had failed, and he blamed the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not creating employment opportunities as it had promised.

"I voted for Modi last time," said Kumar, wearing a pink shirt and wrinkled, brown trousers that had droplets of paint on it. "He had promised jobs, and I was sure I would get something. I won't vote for him again."

Modi's failure to create tens of millions of jobs for the country's youth - a promise which helped him secure the largest mandate in three decades in 2014 - would be the biggest threat to his bid for another term in a general election due by May, 2019, many political analysts say.

That seems the case in Kasba Bonli, a market town in Rajasthan state on the edge of sprawling wheat fields, which voted overwhelmingly for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at assembly elections in 2013 and the general election in 2014.

"My two sons are educated but unemployed," said Hanuman Prasad Meena, a farmers' leader in the town. "Many farmers voted in Modi's name earlier, but he has no support here now."

Hanumat Dixit, a local BJP leader in Rajasthan, acknowledged the party could suffer in the coming election because of the lack of jobs, but added Modi needed more time to deliver on his promises.