In absence of proper employment avenues, the youth of Jammu and Kashmir are a disturbed lot and exhausted in terms of their hope for a better future. And the simple reason for their frustrations is that they have always been exploited. They have been exploited by the politics as well as by the situational turbulence. The general developmental lag suffered by the UT too has exacted a heavy toll. What should be the most productive section of the society is today sullen in frustration, as a good majority of them is either with ‘no’ or ‘very little’ income.
In this backdrop, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has rekindled hope amongst the jobless lot by launching the Mission YUVA (Yuva Udyami Vikas Abhiyan) and describing the programme as a “transformative initiative aimed at empowering the youth of Jammu and Kashmir through entrepreneurship, financial support and opportunity-rich ecosystem development”. He promised creation of 1.37 lakh enterprises and 4.25 lakh jobs in five years.
While one hopes that this new programme would prove successful but for that the government needs to have the will to deliver. In past too, we have seen launch of several such initiatives which benefited none, or, just a few. It is because the youth here have been deliberately programmed for only one kind of job – engagement in government service, which of course is not and cannot be available for all. The enterprising among them, who want to break the jinx and do something new by generating their own employment, don’t have access to the avenues and opportunities for the same – financial institutions and various governmental agencies being big hurdles in their way. This is despite the government’s pronounced invite to the youth to go for self-employment ventures!
As admitted by the Chief Minister, funding is always a major hurdle for youth. Now that he promises that Under Mission Yuva, his government is committed to removing this obstacle. Past experience suggests that banking sector has never been cooperative when it comes to financing the jobless. These banks are ever ready to finance rich defaulters but when it comes to a jobless young boy or girl, who intend to do something to earn a livelihood, banks are ruthless.
During recently held assembly elections, every political party, contesting, made tall promises about generating jobs for the jobless. That the political parties use the issue of unemployment during elections and make big promises conveys in no-non-sense terms that none of them is serious about the issue because had they been, they would tell people candidly that no government, leave aside a single political leader, can provide government jobs to all the unemployed. It is impossible! However, instead of creating alternative spaces for the unemployed youth in private sector, instead of helping them in generating their own employment avenues, they are allowed to drift away into the world of make-believe. This has been happening in the past and this continues to happen.
