In the prevailing unemployment scenario across the nation, there is a dire need for the policy planners to con- duct a thorough analysis of the existing policies and find out the reasons for failure to address the unemployment issue faced by the youth of this nation. With the ever increasing graph of unemployment across the nation be it due to the rising population accompanied by other multiple factors or the government’s failure to take the requisite result oriented measures, there is a dire need to make a serious introspection to find out where we have failed in our initiative to address this vital issue. It is pertinent to mention here that India is a nation with the biggest youth power in the world and most probably with the biggest army of unem- ployed youth. It is not that those failing to get employment are not qualified as per the requirements of the job market but the fact is that the number of jobs across the nation is far less as compared to the number of youth seeking jobs.
J&K being no exception is also witnessing more or less a similar situation. The most disturbing factor here is that the applicants for even the lowest cadre posts include hundreds of Ph.D holders besides those holding graduate and post graduate degrees. However, unprecedented measures have been initiated in this regard by the incumbent J&K Administration led by Lt Governor Manoj Sinha especially by making every effort to bring a paradigm shift in the mindset of youth so that they prefer to be job providers instead of job seekers and some progress has already been made on this front. It is a fact that applicants in India are not finding jobs commensurate to their qualification. Take the example of large army of engineers being produced every year by the institutions across the nation and a very meagre percentage of them getting purely engineering jobs with the rest taking to marketing or even banking and other non-engineering jobs. This is not confined to engineering only but the posi- tion is the same so far as other fields are concerned.
Another indicator resulting out of such a situation is the widening of the already huge gap between what industry wants and what universities and educational institutions are producing. In such a situation it would not be wrong to say that it is more difficult to get a job as a peon in India than get- ting admission into the world famous institutions in US or Europe. Being citizens of the world’s youngest country with lakhs of young men and women possessing decent qualifi- cations fighting for such low cadre jobs, it is high time that we all ponder over this serious matter and rethink our gov- ernance priorities especially in view of the nation’s demo- graphic bulge that can be definitely of economic advantage only if the policy makers take some time to meticulously plan a comprehensive policy taking due care of achieving both short as well as long term results. The policy would deliver the desired results only if it is planned by focussing more on regional potentials for expanding the employment avenues, be it tourism or other sectors. In this regard Agriculture sec- tor has the greatest potential of addressing the unemploy- ment issue but the same has not been fully tapped till date as is evident from the failure to stop migration of people from rural to urban areas across the nation. So let the gov- ernment flag this issue as topmost priority and address it by bringing in drastic reforms before it rattles the whole system in the world’s largest democracy.