Unemployment Among Educated Youth In Jammu & Kashmir Is An Important Cause Of Mental Distress

Increasing unemployment is a serious problem. According to the report so far, the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir is at top of the unemployment rate and reasons for the rise in unemployment are many. Throughout the erstwhile state the youth is in a distressed phase. The growing distress has lead to a phase of frustration and many youth are moving towards drug addic­tion. This is indeed a matter of great concern. Before abrogation of article 370, in a first –of- its- kind of exercise carried out by the governor administration, the Directorate of employment had asked the un­employed youth having post-graduation, M.phil or Ph.D degrees to register themselves with employee exchanges in their respective districts. In just 15 days time, over 1.5 lakh highly qualified youth reg­istered themselves as unemployed.

State’s own economic survey report of 2016 mentions that unemployment rate in Jammu & Kashmir is higher than the average national un­employment rate. Many unemployed youths be­lieve that misgovernance, poor administration and corruption have been the biggest problems of now called UT of Jammu & Kashmir . Another report of 2019 states that unemployment rate in jammu & Kashmir stood at 15.89 per cent, making it one of the worst performers on the job generation front. Increasing unemployment has become a serious problem which must be resolved. It has made un­employed youth worse. Every time, big promises are made by the government but to date, no one has fulfilled those promises. There is no officinal reme­dy for unemployment which is a source of languish­ment and anguishment. It is not that there are no vacancies in the government departments, but no one is obliged by their promises to fill these vacan­cies.

When special status was withdrawn from the state. Government of India promised of 50000 jobs in the next three to four months. It has been more than seven months but no jobs has been ad­vertised yet. Educated unemployed youths are still waiting patiently for the government to fulfil its promise.

With the passage of time, many educated unemployed people are getting overage. Who would worry about them? Kashmir has already been home to troubles, so no one here sees a ray of hope. youths have become hopeless. On one hand the govern­ment is opening up big colleges to further education but who will employ them, who get degrees from these colleges? The government has to think about it very deeply. The government has to bring such remedial tactics & policies with the help of all the wise people so that the unemployed educated youth can be saved. Along with, the government should take major steps to overcome this problem.

First of all, as many jobs are available in government departments should be filled in earliest possible time because over years many institutions have faced allegations of irregularities and discrep­ancies in their working mechanism and thus most recruitment processes ends up in courtrooms. For one reason or the other, a single competitive ex­amination process takes years to conclude leaving many candidates overage and thus ineligible for fu­ture examinations.

All the schemes that can eliminate unem­ployment should be easily available to youths so that they can take advantage of it & eliminate un­employment. Some industries that do not pollute the environment should be established here and with the help of these industries unemployment can be reduced. Most importantly, bribe and dishonesty must be eliminated from the root so that people can trust the government.