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| Difference Omar could’ve made | | |
The employment policy announced by the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on the 104th birth anniversary of his grandfather and National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah is yet to find a matching response from the stakeholders –the educated, unemployed but employable youths of Jammu and Kashmir. Named as Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Policy for the Youth SKEWPY has three main features –first: voluntary service allowance for the unemployed youth, second: enterprise fund support, third: creation of one lakh government jobs and filling in of as many vacancies over next five years i.e. the remaining tenure of the present coalition government. It is not completely surprising as why the youths have not responded to the policy even three days after it was announced by the Chief Minister and was widely publicized through newspapers across the state. It pains while putting it bluntly but the fact of the matter is that the lack of reaction from the stakeholders stems from the misplaced hopelessness prevailing among the youths. Yes, this is a complete hopelessness and completely misplaced. As n unfortunate psychological syndrome, for the educated youths in Jammu and Kashmir and their parents the government is seen is the principal employer. Therefore, whatever petty job find or whatever meager remuneration they get is overwhelmingly welcomed if it is coming from the government treasury. In past ten decades we have seen graduates, postgraduates and even doctorates wasting precious five years of their life as casual education workers, popularly known as Rehbr-e-Taleem, in the hope of getting the permanent government job of a teacher at monthly emoluments of roughly Rs 10000 at the end of the stipulated period. Most of them have got the ‘desired jobs’ but what about those 60 months at the rate of Rs 1500 and then what is a job worth Rs 10,000 for rest of life when they worked so hard to reach there. The collateral damage is much larger and dangerous. At an awfully disappointing figure of Rs 1500 most of them work with a half heart and therefore the disappointing results coming in from the government schools are no secret. This is the damage the government guarantees for the jobs are doing. We understand that Omar Abdullah had very little at his hands to undo this psychological scenario. However, given his urbane image and wide global exposure and the innovative mind for being the young the young politician he could have tried to do things differently. Great men, after all, don’t do the different things but they make the difference by doing things differently. The different required to be brought in in the present scenario could have been by shunning the mere political correctness and talking business. Instead of offering doles for political appeasement, there was need to create awareness that a range of allowance from Rs 500 to Rs 1100 is the maximum his government is able to offer and this is not something which can built anyone’s career. Then he should have told the aspirants that Jammu and Kashmir government is perhaps the largest employer in proportion to population in the country and therefore people should not expect any more jobs. With first and third feature of the policy ticked off, he should have invited the youths to avail the second part –the entrepreneurship fund –of the policy and asked his administration to make the scheme workable and practical. There is more than one reason to hope that the Chief Minister does things differently.
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