SHEIKH ABID
THE Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB) has filled nearly half of the over 20,000 posts for which recruitment advertisements were issued since 2020.
According to the report of the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, 20,323 posts have been advertised by the Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board since 2020 and the selection process has been completed with respect to 9,205 posts, while selection for the remaining posts is under process at various stages. The committee recommends fast-track recruitment on the remaining posts and resolving the procedural and administrative issues which are delaying the recruitment.
Earlier this year, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha undertook a commitment to tackle unemployment by initiating a comprehensive recruitment drive to fill all vacant positions across various government departments within the next six months.
The UT administration’s commitment to fill all the gazetted and non-gazetted vacancies before the Assembly elections is a welcome step and efforts have been put in place for all to see. It’s only because of the government’s efforts that JKPSC, otherwise notorious for delayed exams and always engulfed in court cases and writ petitions, with a recruitment taking years and multiple exams/quashes to complete (2016 KAS fiasco) have now created history in conducting back to back JKAS examinations every year on time along with other gazette recruitments like assistant professor, medical officer, prosecuting officers etc.
Similarly, the JKSSB, despite being in news for all the negative and obvious reasons, is also coming back on track slowly in conducting various non gazetted exams for more than 20,000 posts.
• The J&K employement issue: An analysis
Despite all the efforts, J&K’s youth still can’t fully rely on government jobs for sustenance as there is a huge mismatch in demand-supply ratio.
Against the positive narrative created all around, J&K still figures among those with the highest unemployment rates in India.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s unemployment rate in March 2023 was 8.11%.The unemployment rate in urban India was 7.93%, while the unemployment rate in rural India was 7.44%.The states with the highest unemployment rates in India are Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir.
But yes, the unemployment rate in Jammu and Kashmir declined from 6.7 per cent in 2019-20 to 5.2 per cent in 2021-22 while the urban unemployment rate dipped by 1.1 percentage points, according to the Economic Survey Report 2022-23. The report, released by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta recently, stated that the labour force participation rate was 61.5 per cent in 2021-22 as against 56.3 per cent in 2019-20, while the worker population ratio has increased to 58.3 per cent in 2021-22 from 52.5 per cent in 2019-20.
• Need for private industrial setup
To cater to the ever increasing skilled, semi skilled and unskilled educated workforce, there is a strong need for private industrial sector to absorb the huge demand of youth piling up every year constantly.
To address this issue, the UT administration had recently announced a private industrial setup in J&K with big business giants from across the globe, particularly gulf countries, all set to invest in Jammu and Kashmir.
This point was also highlighted during the recent hearing in the Supreme Court over the abrogation of Article 370. In almost three years since the Jammu and Kashmir government announced a new industrial policy in January 2021, the Union Territory has received proposals worth Rs 84,544 crore in as many as 42 industrial sectors. However, actualisation of these proposals has been a tad sluggish.
Till date, 414 units (266 in Jammu and 148 in Kashmir) have been registered with actual investment received on ground standing at just over Rs 2,518 crore. The administration has, however, received Rs 13,777 crore in land premium against proposed units.
It is in the hospitality sector, however, that the UT’s potential has remained grossly underutilised. Investment proposals for setting up hotels in J&K amount to just Rs 87 crore till date. Sources say things have moved slowly due to paucity of “appropriate” land.
Notably, the government had taken foreign delegates to Kashmir for the tourism meet of the G20 event and underlined how tourism was booming in Kashmir. Almost 60 per cent of the investment proposals in terms of value (Rs 50,538 crore) are for Jammu. However, in terms of the number of proposals, only 1,551 or 25 per cent of the total 6,117 are for Jammu. The balance 4,566 proposals are for Kashmir and entail an investment of Rs 34,006 crore.
The government hopes this will generate over one lakh jobs.
A total of 1,767 units have so been allotted 11,861 kanals of land, completely exhausting government’s existing land bank. Of these, 530 units in Jammu have been allotted 7,295 kanals in Jammu and the rest have gone to Kashmir for 1,237 units.
All these numbers sound really good if realised at the earliest. Only then can we predict their success.
But as portrayed after the abrogation that Jammu and Kashmir will turn into new base for industrial sector and private firms, the follow-up by the authorities seems a little lethargic and there is a need to brush things across and provide opportunities to the youth away from the government sector. Conventionally, only the government sector is considered ‘employment’ in the J&K and that notion needs to be set straight and private infusion of industries will change the dynamics of employment in the UT.
It is pertinent to mention that the LG administration is doing wonders to uplift J&K UT in all spectrums of effective governance, corruption-free public delivery mechanisms, smooth welfare measures and free and fair transparent recruitments. This was validated when last year only two exams conducted by JKSSB viz JKPSI and FAA were scrapped right away when they allegedly came under scanner for illicit scams. Currently, the JKSSB is conducting the document verification for the newly held JKPSI exam candidates and the exam for FAA is scheduled for the last week of January tentatively. Similarly, other requirements were also conducted smoothly as per the chief secretary’s directions.
These steps should lessen unemployment to a great extent and would eventually relieve the desperate youth of J&K who have been otherwise juggling with the blunders by traditional dynasts of various political parties and their mischievous backdoor appointments on nepotistic basis.
