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| Let youth potential fuel prosperity: VP | | | Early Times Report
Srinagar, June 20: Vice President of India Dr Mohammad Hamid Ansari, while stressing on creation of adequate facilities for technical and vocational education, has said that skill upgradation and improving employability of Jammu and Kashmir youth would open new opportunities for them in all the service sectors.
The Vice President said that the youth of Jammu and Kashmir want to fulfil their potential and lead lives with dignity and honour. He said Government is committed to enable this and herald all the new future for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Dr Ansari was addressing 17th Annual Convocation of the University of Kashmir in Srinagar today.
In his philosophical convocation address, the Vice President said, “India is engrossed in challenges of development and political empowerment. It is one-sixth of the world in terms of population and is a microcosm of the diversities that characterise our world. It has been rightly called ‘the largest multicultural society in the world’. The accommodation of diversity has been an Indian trait down the ages, made possible by an innate capacity for synthesis”, adding “how do we use this asset in the future, in what manner can we harness it for accommodating the competing demands of identity, autonomy and integration in a world that is perennially shrinking and inter-dependent, how would this translate into institutions and practices, how would it impact on the daily lives of citizens, what may be the pitfalls that need to be avoided and what in concrete terms, should be expectations of youth from society, need to be responded meaningfully providing for representation of the collectivise in the formal democratic structures”.
Ansari said “the special provision for guarantees or affirmative action in six broad categories – caste, class, backwardness, religion, region, sex and language – is evidence of this approach for securing justice and ensuring cultural autonomy in a composite culture within a framework of a quasi-federal structure driven by an overriding imperative of maintaining territorial integrity”. He said, “accommodation of diversity has thus been consciously incorporated as a distinctive feature of the Indian State. It implies that a standardized image of an Indian cannot be constructed; if presented, it is partial, incomplete, misleading. Despite this accommodative framework, there have been acts of omission and commission impacting on identity and integration issues”.
Vice President said, “democratic politics and economic liberalisation has also strengthened regionalist trends. Linguistic reorganization has ceased to be the culmination of the process of expression of identities. Linguistically homogenous states have been subdivided over grievances of development. New demands for statehood continue to be made on grounds of ethnicity, culture or regional grievances. The imperative of better governance adds a sense of urgency to these”. He said “these impulses of identity assertion and recognition confront two contradictory trends at the micro and macro levels. On the one hand, forms of identity assertion at national and state levels combined with existing patterns of political mobilization have been perceived as thwarting the impulses towards internal integration and consolidation. A modern market economy does not coexist with autarky. On the contrary, societal transformation resulting from economic growth and urbanization has erased or downplayed certain identities while emphasizing new ones. Each of these impacts the political agenda at local, regional and national levels”.
Ansari elaborating said that at the other end of the spectrum, we are living in a global village where new integrating impulses have gone beyond national boundaries weaving nations into a common fabric of economic and financial architecture , shared membership of multi-lateral institutions and common value systems governing individual and state behaviour. Countervailing forces have also emerged. Thus, globalization has produced a counter trend of resurgence of nationalism and of an emphasis on national and cultural identities. Domestically, one notices certain unhealthy trends towards a homogenising nationalism that flattens diversities, and has little respect for local cultures, value systems and ways of life, he added.
Governor, NN Vohra, who is also Chancellor of the University, in his address said, “from times immemorial Kashmir has been a seat of learning and a forum for scholarly exchanges and intellectual discourses. The people of Kashmir have made rich contribution to the growth of languages, art and culture and to the evolution of harmonized pluralistic ethos which symbolize the essence of its deeply secular traditions”. He said that the composite culture of Kashmir manifests the essence of Kashmiriyat, which must be protected and preserved by the upcoming generations.
Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Riyaz Punjabi presented Vice Chancellor’s Report highlighting the vision and mission of the University, its development and extension programmes, academic progress, research output, international and national linkage, library facilities, special recognition of departments, student placement, e-governance, sports and extra-curricular activities, supporting services, quality assurance and enhancement and future plans.
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