Uchit Singhal
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
There is no better embodiment of above words from the poem of Robert Frost than our present Prime Minister who has once again decided to give shape to his words. In June, it was announced by the present Government that over 10 Lakh vacancies will be filled within one and a half years time in the various different ministries and departments of the Government. Not much time had elapsed since then and the Government was ready with the first spell of its achievement on the past 22nd October, just short of Diwali, in the form of Mission Niyukti when PM distributed the joining letters to thousands of recruits/appointees. The identified candidates who completed all the formalities were sent appointment letters over their emails. DoPT coordinated actively with all the related ministries/departments under mission mode to make this program a huge success. 50 different venues across various states and regions were selected for the purpose where the candidates connected directly with the Prime Minister who in turn distributed them their appointment/joining letters through video conference mechanism. Postal department and Railways were assigned the basic responsibility as overall venue and event coordinators. For J&K, the program was scheduled to take place at Jammu (where India Post was coordinating) and at Udhampur (where Indian Railways was coordinating). Coordinators from other departments like Defence, DFS, Labour, MHA, Revenue etc were also assigned for each event center as per requirement. As stated already, almost every nook and corner of the nation was covered under above mission so that the youth irrespective of caste, religion, sex, region, color or hue is covered and gets associated with Rising and Shining India. Invitation to new appointees to attend the event physically or to join the virtual address by the PM along with the Weblink was sent to the worthy candidates. All this could very easily be termed as another political gimmick of the Government of the day by political observers, if one did not have a good understanding of the Supreme Law of our land.
Our Constitution has certain Directive Principles for the State which are engrained in Part-IV of this document. These principles although non-justiciable but they serve as ideals which are meant to be kept in mind by the State when it formulates the policies and enacts laws. These can be termed as ‘Instrument of Instructions’ for the State which seek to establish social and economic democracy in the country. As one of our former Prime Ministers said “You cannot teach democracy to an empty stomach” and one of the basic pre-requisite to tackle that is to provide job and employment opportunities. In the words of Y.C. James Yen “When we talk about democracy, if the people’s stomach is empty, democracy is also empty.” So to achieve democracy as enshrined in our Constitution in true sense, provision of jobs and employment opportunities to this bracket of population which constitutes more than half of the total population is must. The energy of the present young generation if truly harnessed has the potential to become the biggest strength of our nation. Article 38 of our Constitution talks about promoting the welfare of the people by securing a social order through justice – social, economic and political – and to minimize inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities. Article 39 mentions right to adequate means of livelihood for all citizens. Both these articles of the Constitution are linked directly or indirectly to job and employment opportunities for the youth of the nation. If the youth despite all their educational qualifications and securing degrees are unable to obtain the jobs they deserve, it will breed nothing but resentment and dissatisfaction not only against the present system of governance but the society as a whole. As per Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, we cannot build peace on empty stomachs.
Again lack of adequate employment opportunities and prospects will divert the energy of youth to antisocial activities like drugs and crime and we will end up having a society having a very weak and fragile social fabric and disturbed law and order which will result in loss of trust in the Government and may give rise to Civil war like situations as recently happened in Sri Lanka, Haiti and many other countries across the Globe. So, what is required is that this trust deficit and mismatch between the peoples’ aspirations and Governments’ priorities gets continually addressed to. One such step in this direction, will be this Mission, Mission Niyukti, by the present Government which will go a long way in building the trust of the youth of this nation over the present system of Governance. For the UT of J&K, this bears a special connotation and will help channelize the energy of the youth of this region, who has for long wandered in the endless maze of lies and false propagandas, in the right direction. This will enable the youth of the region to get connected with the mainstream social and economic development that is happening in the nation and bring them out of their silos. It cannot be declined that youth of the present decides the future of that nation. Kashmiri youth have grown up in such a vicious atmosphere that has made them feel isolated and aloof. Time is to bring them back and link them up with the development that is happening nationwide. To demystify the false propagandas against the present system of governance, it is necessary that such exercises happen quite often where the achievements of the government which are directly related to public benefit get portrayed so that more and more people aspire to reap the fruits of the present development model. Since long, the economic and political gurus have blamed the lack of appropriate job and employment opportunities as the reason behind mistrust of youth in the present Government, thus giving rise to anti-national and anti-social elements like the various different terrorist and naxal outfits. But all this will be a thing of the past if we are able to bridge that trust deficit and get the people associated with the the government. And for this, exercises like 22nd October need to happen at regular intervals if we are to sustain as a Nation.
(The author is an IRTS officer serving in J&K and Dr. Shally, a Ph.D in economics from Kurukshetra University)
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