SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, today inaugurated a day-long workshop on ‘Yuva Udhyami Vikas Abhiyaan (YUVA)’ aiming at accelerating employment of youth through entrepreneurship in convergence with several other schemes already under implementation here in the Union Territory.
The workshop was attended by the Additional Chief Secretary, Forests, Principal Secretary, Finance, Secretary, L&E, Secretary, Planning, DG, Planning, Director, IIM Jammu, representatives from Banks, Bill Foundation besides other concerned officers.
Speaking on the occasion, Dulloo remarked that the vision document to be prepared would act as a bedrock of the initiatives to be taken in making useful interventions for providing gainful employment opportunities to our youth through entrepreneurship. He exhorted upon all the stakeholders to collaborate for the preparation of version 1.0 of this document on the available date and their analysis. He maintained that once the document is ready, it would be easy to upgrade it with evolving situations and future challenges.
The Chief Secretary asked to identify the gaps in successful implementation of different employment generation schemes here. He also called for taking in consideration the unique opportunities and strengths available here in the UT.
ACS, Forests, Dheeraj Gupta, stressed on studying the design and architecture of different ongoing schemes so that the necessary tweaking is done to increase their traction among youth. He asked for giving clear recommendations and actionable points for each initiative referred in the document.
Other stakeholders also gave their insights about making this document more effective and relevant. They also deliberated upon different policy matters mentioned in the first draft of this document depicted during this workshop.
The document as explained by Secretary, Labour & Employment, Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, has been prepared with the aim of providing a conducive ecosystem for promoting business entrepreneurship across different sectors in J&K. He said that the document would be quite inclusive with the identification of key sectors, skilling needs, resource gaps and future action plan for ushering in feasible climate for entrepreneurship for our youth.
The factors limiting the culture of entrepreneurship here were also deliberated upon along with the current skilling and education profile of youth here. The critical analysis of gaps and resource mobilization from different quarters was also made the point of discussion among the participants.
It was informed that over the years the service sector has emerged as a largest sector ahead of Industry and Agriculture here. It was further detailed in the document that overall the MSMEs are major focus areas as the employment potential identified here is more than that of large enterprises. The document also enlisted the current industrial set-up and categories of units established in different districts, their annual turnover and employment generation by each of them here in J&K.
The other features of this vision document as explained included a SWOT analysis of all the incumbent policies in Agriculture, IT, Tourism and Industry. It also envisions potential areas of investment here along with their allied sectors of entrepreneurship. Besides, the identified areas and emerging sectors discussed included Tourism, Healthcare, Agriculture & Food Processing, Textiles, Film Tourism, Skill Development, Handloom & Handicrafts, and Information Technology along with others mentioned in the vision document.
Regarding the architecture of YUVA, it was apprised that besides having a Nodal Department at the apex level it would have a PMU for monitoring the overall functioning and achieving the outcomes at the district, block down to panchayat level for counselling, guidance, capacity building and grievance redressal of aspiring candidates.
