Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges that Jammu and Kashmir is face to face with. The number of educated youth with academic degrees is increasing with every passing day but there are no job opportunities. In Jammu and Kashmir, the government is the only employing agency and it can in no way accommodate the huge number of unemployed youth. However, now the things are changing and changing for good. The agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, dairy farming, sheep farming and tourism are the sectors that have huge potential of employment generation. Thankfully, the present dispensation has been encouraging the educated youth to try their luck and talent in these fields. The youth need proper guidance and hand-holding by the government. Red tapism has been the biggest hurdle in the generation of employment as different government agencies would cooperate and help the youth to get introduced to employment generating schemes. It is heartening to note that Lt Governor, Manoj Sinha has made a commitment with the youth that his administration would replace red tapism with red carpet thus opening employment avenues for the unemployed youth.
The basic reason with the growing employment has been the faulty educational policy. Youth would come out of colleges and universities with degrees but no skill. Degrees that cannot guarantee jobs are useless and that is what has been happening here from decades. However, the recent thrus on academia-industry collaboration has every potential to change the game. As rightly said by the Lt Governor, a strong academic-industry collaboration will bring a meaningful change in the private and public sector. During a function held at Islamic University of Science & Technology, LG said that collaboration between academia and industry will help in building an enabling environment for innovation to flourish in UT of J&K. He said that a strong Academic-Industry collaboration will bring a meaningful change in the private and public sector, besides providing an opportunity to promote innovation, work on new model of IEC – Innovate, Evolve and Commercialize the relevant technology, building new knowledge to meet the needs of the future.
As rightly said by the Lt Governor, startups could be a true game changer for economic growth subject that all the concerned organs of the administration take the issue in missionary zeal. Though, as mentioned by the Lt Governor, the government is determined to provide incubation and seed funding support to brilliant ideas and solutions, all the stakeholders will have to focus on affordability, sustainability of innovative products, creation of Industry Innovation clusters to encourage young entrepreneurs and drive job creation. It is now the responsibility of the young innovators to come up with ideas of potential and possibility and the government will be there to extend every possible support to transform those ideas into entrepreneurship ventures.
