Ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the crisis of unemployment unites India as few things do. Why are important sections of India out of work? How do unemployed Indians live? Why is the work available not enough to earn a livelihood? How do Indians secure employment? How long is the wait? With India out of work, The Wire unveils a series that explores one of the most important poll issues of our time.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to at least 7,000 government employees at Srinagar’s Bakshi Stadium earlier this month, many of whom were reportedly directed to attend the rally while others could not as they were disallowed from entering the premises.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty. Photo: Intifada P. Basheer and Azam Abbas
Those who were allegedly made to attend the event came from departments such as school education, higher education, agriculture, social welfare and the Srinagar municipal corporation. Locals who were barred from attending said that they wanted to talk to the Modi about their problems.
Being left out was almost like a metaphor for them. For many, it was a reminder of how the job market had forgotten Jammu and Kashmir’s youth. Akhter, an unemployed graduate, who requested that he only be mentioned by his first name, asks, “Should we hope for jobs or should we not?”
From calculations to cafes
“While hunting for jobs, I ended up completing degrees just for measly recruitment drives,” says one Iqbal Ahmed.
“I completed my MSc in Biotechnology in 2016. Then I did a BEd degree for some posts that were announced. Thousands would apply for five to six teaching job posts. Then I also did a two-year diploma course in Operation Theatre training. Despite all this, I am jobless,” said Ahmed.
Ahmed says he took various loans from friends and family, to invest in a Kashmiri café brand, which has over 35 outlets in Jammu and Kashmir and mainland India. Ahmed credits Kashmiri entrepreneur Javid Parsa for mentoring him when he needed it the most. His degrees, he stresses, proved useless.
“Today, I am not a job seeker, by Allah’s grace, I’m a job giver” Ahmed said.
Parsa, founder of a Kashmiri restaurant chain, has had his share of mentoring hundreds of educated yet unemployed youth.
“My main motivation behind leaving my corporate job in Hyderabad and returning to Kashmir in 2014 was essentially so I could help my people amidst this absolute dearth of job opportunities,” Parsa says.
Parsa believes that there is a massive youth population in the Union Territory which is unemployed and now unmoved by the political promises made to them.
“When I share job openings at my restaurant, exceptionally educated graduates and post-graduates contact me for wait staff jobs,” he tells The Wire.
He adds that the private sector is as good as non-existent.
Decaying degrees
Each morning Afshan Rashid travels a distance of 60 kms from Ganderbal to reach her ancestral land in Pulwama’s Lassipora. “Farming is an intense, mindful and continuous activity, it requires utmost attention,” she explains. “My usual farm day consists of many activities such as feeding chickens, milking cows, watering shrubbery and trees, switching on drip irrigation, de-weeding,” she adds.
Rashid, a media professional by education chose the farming life out of affection for her mother. “We started this initiative on a small scale, and started receiving such great response on Instagram for these simple farm videos we would post. Many unemployed persons would tell us how their unemployment – despite the fact that they were educated – was making them consider farming to earn a living,” Rashid says.
Rashid too tries to mentor as many unemployed young men and women as possible, and tries to guide them towards government schemes and subsidies that help budding farmers.
Musaib Nazeer, an MBA graduate, is currently running a branch of Parsa’s restaurant in Srinagar.
Nazeer says he struggled to adjust to the reality that so few job options were available in the region. “There is a lot of unemployment here and this creates a whole new layer of challenges. Over-qualified individuals are forced to settle for jobs which do not match their calibre. This negates the whole idea of education,” Nazeer says, adding that it is common to have over-qualified people apply in various capacities at the restaurant he manages.
Riyaz Bhat, a graduate in political science knows this all too well. At 29, he currently works as a waiter. “The government should think about us, give us ways to put our knowledge to use,” he says.
Dr. Uzma Saleem Malik, lecturer at a government college in Jammu, has seen the impact that lack of opportunities can have on the educated unemployed very closely. Due to the absence of a robust private sector or corporate culture, several educated persons in the region are also desperately trying to crack government job exams. “It is brutal. Sometimes when I review ID cards while conducting exams, I see that those born in the late 80s are still trying to crack SSB exams which offer meagre salaries,” Malik says.
Malik also juxtaposes the situation to those in metro cities. “A qualified PhD holder in Delhi, or any other metro city, is bound to have various avenues to gain employment. Here, posts are few, work expectation is massive and salaries are miniscule. There are only a handful universities here, they also may or may not advertise posts of all departments. That also restricts employment opportunities.”
Requesting anonymity, a PhD scholar from Kashmir said that after completing her PhD in a political science topic, she had qualified for the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test and State-Level Eligibility Test. She claimed that for an assistant professor’s job alone, scholars of this region face verification attempts by police and other investigation departments.
Other locals whom The Wire spoke to said that private sector in the region has been reduced to handicrafts, hospitality, and entrepreneurship. Despite political claims, they argued, there was no investment by private players in the region in education, research and civil society organisations.
In December 2022, data released by the Ministry of Home Affairs revealed that the total investment in the region in 2021-22 was Rs 376.76 crore, down from Rs 412.74 crore in 2020-21 and a massive drop of 55% from Rs 840.55 crore in 2017-18.
Disappointing data
Apart from rising dissatisfaction and decaying degrees, restricted job prospects are pushing Kashmiri students to reassess their educational trajectories. In 2023, the admission rate in educational institutions in the region was appallingly low with colleges witnessing a 40.6 % decrease in admissions.
Javid Ahmed Tenga, president of Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) told The Wire that to deal with the unemployment numbers, there must be such policies introduced by the government which cater to both the uneducated and educated. “We definitely need drives to skill the unemployed, as for the educated unemployed, private sector needs to be harnessed in a way that their precious time is not wasted while looking for jobs. As PM Modi has allowed for ‘ease of doing business’ in other states, J&K should also be taken into that fold, to reduce our unemployment numbers,” Tenga says.
In April 2023, J&K held the third spot on the list of highest unemployment rates in India at an alarming 23.1% . This marked a jump of 6% from March’s rate of 17.1 %, as per the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
In July 2023, the unemployment rate in J&K, stood at 18.3%, according to MHA data quoted during a reply in Rajya Sabha. The national unemployment average stood at around 8% at the time.
But unemployment numbers are not limited to the number of people living without livelihood.
According to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), J&K had the highest number of attempted suicides in 2022. Out of the 1,769 suicide cases recorded by the NCRB across India in 2022, the UT saw 497 deaths by suicide. On December 5, 2023, the MHA said that around 78 persons committed suicide in Jammu and Kashmir between 2020 to 2022 due to unemployment.
It is also noteworthy that the NCRB report states that since the reading down of Article 370 in 2019, the UT saw at least 450 cases of suicide, this number further worsened in 2021 with the toll sitting at 586 cases.
While replying to a query raised by MP Vijayakumar who had asked whether the issue of unemployment was the main cause of youth dying by suicide in the country, the Minister of State in the MHA, Nityanand Rai, said that official statistics revealed that 4,88,009 suicides – 1,53,052 in 2020, 1,64,033 in 2021, and 1,70,924 in 2022 were reported throughout the country from 2020 to 2022.
In J&K, 78 suicides including 46 in 2020, 15 in 2021 and 17 in 2022 were reported, owing to unemployment.
