Joblessness is among the top challenging problems of almost all the emerging economies of the world. In emerging economies like India, where population grows at an alarming rate and population control is yet a challenge for government; the uncontrolled population growth leads to unemployment which results in job crisis. In this situation, it becomes easy for private firms to exploit youth on meager wages. Qualified and experienced youth fall prey of private organizations easily. Most of the people get work in unorganized sector on daily wages which do not serve them longer. The silent presence of unemployment encourages many social evils like corruption, theft, production and promotion of spurious drugs, food adulteration… In this way all the strata of the society becomes victim of unemployment, indirectly. Education loses its solemnity and books become burden.
Our own Kashmir valley is home for thousands of unemployed youth. Few employment opportunities to utilize, therefore, corruption and nepotism accompany each and every recruitment process. There is no antidote that can curb such an alarming unemployment rate without utilizing potential resources of our state. Unfortunately, Kashmir valley lost self sufficiency which further deteriorated the chances of creating employment opportunities. The unemployment rate of our state is higher than the national unemployment rate. How long we will rely on government jobs and tourism? The strife driven valley is prone to long shutdown calls where it becomes difficult for recruiting agencies to complete recruitment process on time. The detrimental long spells of curfews also inhibit tourists from paying visit to the valley.
There are number of other reasons for growing unemployment rate of valley. For instance, the surge in unemployment rate in 2017 could be easily related to 2016 conflict when thousands of youth returned home from most of the states of India, feeling insecure outside their homes. Similarly, after mob lynching incidents more youth returned home. The valley which is already in grip of decades old violent conflict has fewer reputed institution to serve a military of unemployed youth living here and returning back to provide them better platform with a handsome salary. Political intervention therein also paves a big hurdle to deliver justice in case of any recruitment done by these institutions. Kashmiris also distanced from centuries old tradition of making handlooms. These handlooms were exported. The export-import ratio was 1:3 in 1947 while it is 4:1 nowadays. We need to introspect. Now we import more than what we exported at the dawn of free India. In simple words, import grew while export fell. Decades ago, it was believed that there is a lineage between a person and a job. A son was thought to be a perpetuator of father’s job. We rejected family jobs without examining the market and our own capacity to excel by owning our own identity. We chose to be slaves of others than choosing modern equipments for our own business. So, skilled labors from other states with modern equipments took advantage of our lost appetite which ultimately rendered us jobless. In addition, the decades old turmoil and emergence of neo-militancy also discourage investments with business marred by uncertainties. Hence chances of negligible job creation do exist here.
Meanwhile, the analysis done by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) from primary data collected by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) to understand the spending pattern of Kashmir valley shows ‘despite conflict, Kashmiris economically better than most of the Indian states’. The data revealed that the average household expenditure of Kashmiris is better than most of the Indian states. The analysis done has nothing to do with employment rate. Being better than most of the state does not mean ‘it has reached to a level it should be.’ So, if it has reached then we also need jobs. As mentioned earlier, Kashmir valley has lost self sufficiency. We should strive for to make our motherland self sufficient once again.
In these circumstances, government of J&K should take keen interest in unorganized sectors also—private firms, schools, etc—were major part of population do work. For instance we would take example of private schools. Private schools hire teachers on different pay scales, despite of this, at the beginning of winter season these teachers are expelled from job. Working on a meager salary, there is no job security for them, albeit. Same case is with other sectors. Therefore, government should consider it and make a unified pay scale for privately working people with some sort of security. In addition, keen interest should be laid on exploring potential resources of the state. And, I request youth of valley to show interest in their forefathers jobs, without any sort of inferiority. Everyone has right to strive for a reputable job but if we doesn’t have the one, then there should be no hesitation in doing adopting a family job. Being a barber is better than being a substandard drug dealer.
(Opinions expressed are author’s own, not of the institution he works for)
Sheikh Nissar can be reached at sheikhnissar@Outlook.com
