The employment package offered by the Centre for Jammu and Kashmir is a welcome step to ensure that youngsters in the strife-torn Valley get engaged in productive activities. The package, aimed at creating at least one lakh jobs, is based on a comprehensive employment generation plan prepared by a group of experts headed by former RBI Governor C. Rangarajan. The Rangarajan panel was appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh along with four other groups on Kashmir in May 2006. The idea behind the job-generation plan obviously is that widespread unemployment is a major factor which has contributed to the loss of peace in the border state. Handling the issue of joblessness successfully can make it difficult for terrorist outfits to find new recruits to their destructive projects. Acute unemployment was one of the major factors that helped last summer’s turmoil to continue for four months following the killing of 17-year-old Tufail Ahmed allegedly in a firing incident involving the security forces. Those who indulged in stone throwing were mostly unemployed young men, who were paid by anti-national forces for what they did.
The Rangarajan panel has recommended not only the creation of jobs for the state’s youth, but also tapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s hydroelectric potential and transfer of the Dul Hasti power project to the state to enable it to minimise unemployment. These meaningful recommendations will require a massive infusion of funds, which must be arranged in the larger interest of the nation. It is necessary to increase economic activity in the state so that people have little interest in destructive programmes.
However, there are experts on Kashmir who believe that concentrating on the economic aspect of the Kashmir problem will help only to a limited extent. In their opinion, the political aspect also needs to be handled carefully and boldly. Separatists and mainstream parties have almost similar views on many issues like the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, reduction of troops, allowing more trading activity between Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistan-occupied areas of the state and promoting people-to-people contacts. That is all right. But no one can ignore the importance of increased economic activity for normalising the situation in the Valley.
The Rangarajan panel has recommended not only the creation of jobs for the state’s youth, but also tapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s hydroelectric potential and transfer of the Dul Hasti power project to the state to enable it to minimise unemployment. These meaningful recommendations will require a massive infusion of funds, which must be arranged in the larger interest of the nation. It is necessary to increase economic activity in the state so that people have little interest in destructive programmes.
However, there are experts on Kashmir who believe that concentrating on the economic aspect of the Kashmir problem will help only to a limited extent. In their opinion, the political aspect also needs to be handled carefully and boldly. Separatists and mainstream parties have almost similar views on many issues like the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, reduction of troops, allowing more trading activity between Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistan-occupied areas of the state and promoting people-to-people contacts. That is all right. But no one can ignore the importance of increased economic activity for normalising the situation in the Valley.
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