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Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s message to the youth of Jammu and Kashmir that leave behind the old challenges and take full benefit of new possibilities is an encouraging one. From past several decades, the youth of J&K, particularly from the Kashmir Valley, have been constantly on a receiving. They have been exploited to the core costing them not only their livelihood but even the lives too. The youth here is second to none when it comes to academic excellence, entrepreneurship skills, research, scientific temper, innovations, sports, musin, art and culture etc. Unfortunately, the same youth got caught in a vicious circle of violence wherein he/she became fodder for the political designs of few. The Prime Minister rightly said that it is our youth who will write a new story of development in Jammu and Kashmir. Youth of the UT is talented and has every potential to write this new story of development subject the administration here has the will to carry these youth along and to initiate measures to ensure the youth become assets and not a liability for the society. While the PM has said that 30,000 people have been recruited for various government jobs since 2019 and nearly 20,000 of these posts have been filled in the last one-and-a-half years only, this again is going to boost the morale of youth. Unemployment, it goes without saying, is one of the biggest challenges that J&K is face to face with. It is not any new phenomena, it has been there since decades and no concrete steps were ever taken to find out long term solutions to the problem of unemployment.
Fact of the matter is that government can’t employ every educated youth. Yes, government can do one thing, it can create avenues where youth are able to earn a dignified livelihood. Agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, animal and sheep husbandry, tourism and handicrafts are few sectors which should be concentrated upon. All these sectors have huge potential and can generate employment avenues in abundance. Need is that the administration, in consultation with educated youth, come up with innovative ideas. The status quoist attitude of the bureaucracy has to change. Red-tapism has to end. Self employment schemes are to be made employment seeker friendly not the other way round. Babus and Banks are to be made accountable and a clear message should go down from the top that the administration means business on this front. There are hundreds of examples that could be quoted here wherein the youth desired to look beyond government jobs and try their luck in the sectors mentioned above but the Babus and Banks ruined their dreams.
When PM says that the youth of J&K will write the story of UT’s development and that Jammu and Kashmir is the pride of every Indian and that together we have to take Jammu and Kashmir to new heights, he will have to ensure that J&K administration is on the same page. Youth are the future and their wellbeing is the only guarantee that the society emerges as a healthy, progressing and prospering one. Youth need hand holding. They need to told that their talent is being recognised. They need to be provided avenues wherein they will feel part of the system not the other way round.
