Shreen Hamdani
In the disturbing milieu of Kashmir , it is a known veracity that minds of youth are occupied with curfew, strike, freedom, innocent killings, draconian laws like AFSPA, PSA, and harassments. To add to woes, unemployment is new cause for emergence of mental anxiety, depression and increasing number in suicidal rates. After acquiring highly qualified degrees, theyouth today face lack of opportunities where they can earn to meet their expenses. There are thousands of unemployed youth in the valley who seem to be just parasites on their parents, which lands them in the ocean of frustration, drugs, smoke and other anti-social activities.
It was a good initiative last year, when Mr. Rahul Gandhi and the top business tycoons visited Kashmir to start engaging youth from the valley and promised to invest big on corporate sector in the state. Although on ground results are yet to be seen. Indeed, Kashmir is notprivatized yet because of political problems and youth are simply coerced to work only in few private educational institutions to earn peanuts for their daily meager expenses. They want to channelize their caliber and potential in a positive way. However, the problem among youth is turning into other social issues like late marriages. Youth feel insecure economically and cross their marriageable age in search of government jobs. They seek job vacancies even in unrelated fields . An engineer and doctor have witnessed to be working as bank employees. Unemployment has engulfed and paralyzed mental health of youth.
Thousands of youth run after few posts advertised by the recruited agencies. The recent example of advertisement by Service Selection Board (SSB) in which more than 4 lakh educated unemployed youth responded for mere few thousand posts.Government lags in regulating the schemes, scholarships and economic packages they cater to overcome this severe issue in the society. The number of unemployment is likely to increase with no panacea in sight.