Not surprising at all !!
Despite efforts by the state government to overcome the growing unemployment by promoting private sector, the youth in Kashmir are hardly lured by such initiatives and majority continue to spend years running after a government job.Selft-employment avenues like ‘Make in India’ and Entrepreneurship Development Institute schemes have hardly been able to combat the growing unemployment in the state.
Every year, scores of the youth continue to apply for various government jobs while side-lining alternative livelihood options, a trend that is resulting in an exponential growth of unemployment in the state.
If Google data is to be believed, every month more than 30,000 unemployed youth in Kashmir search for government jobs online.
Google’s keyword planner, an application that analyses search keywords, shows as many as 32,000 Google searches are related to government jobs in Kashmir per month, while only 1,000 queries per month are directed towards private jobs.
The data reveals that keyword ‘Job in Srinagar’ attracts monthly queries of 2,500 searches.
Further the keyword planner application shows that Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB) website receives a monthly traffic of near about 1.4 lakh visits.
It further shows that the jobs related to police department receive more than 3,000 enquiries per month. Tourism Department related jobs remain steady with 500 enquiries per month.
The online data also implies that youth in Kashmir are least interested in Armed and Security Service jobs with not more than hundred queries on an average month for past year.
It is worth to mention that Jammu and Kashmir has highest unemployment rate of 4.9 percent in comparison to its neighbouring states like Punjab (2.9%), Himachal Pradesh (2.8%), and Delhi (4.7%).
All India figures for unemployment rate stand at 2.7 percent. According to government data, unemployment rate for males in J&K was 3.2 percent only whereas that of females was 20.2 percent, which is far too high as compared to the unemployment of females in neighbouring states like Punjab (5.6%), Haryana(4.8%), Delhi (4.3%) and Himachal Pradesh (2.2%).
Further as per reports, 2, 31, 899 educated unemployed youth have registered themselves in employment exchanges in Jammu and Kashmir till September 2014.
Meanwhile experts believe that there are several bottle necks associated with private sector that hinder its growth in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Because of lack of various facilities in Kashmir, the corporate sector has not shown any interest to set up its industries here. The first issue is the lack of adequate electricity which is the prime requirement for any multinational and corporate industry. We have seen many of the India’s corporate gurus have visited here but later changed their mindset due to various reasons. When the corporate sector has not developed here naturally the pressure on service sector has increased,” said noted economist, Prof. Nisar Ali.
He said that the government was not in a position to accommodate the growing lot of uneducated youth in service sector. “The youth here prefer to choose government job even when there is no absorption capacity in the service sector. Right now we have a huge educated manpower of 8 lakh people here and the pressure is building on,” Prof Ali added.
