Future Frightens
In the course of proceedings in the J&K Assembly these days, the government dished out some figures on unemployment. According to the government information there are 3,61,146 educated unemployed youth registered with employment exchange across J&K as of September 2025. It is a staggering figure, yet the tip of an iceberg. The scale of unemployment is far higher than this. Those who are not registered, and those who are past the stage where they can register with any government agency, and those who have lost livelihoods because of the overall changes in economy, cumulatively constitute a far higher figure. This is a situation that is in search of a name, because the oft repeated, worn out expression – unemployment – doesn’t capture the scale or the kind of this crisis. It is a grave societal crisis that we usually see only through economic prism; and this crisis has a political fall out, sooner or later.
Add to it some more data. This year the number of students appearing in the 10th , 11th and 12th grade board exams is around 2.5 lac. It is huge number, and once they move up the ladder, they will keep adding to our unemployment stats. If every year we have a lac of students moving ahead in terms of academic journey, how do we accommodate them at the end of the line? How many end up in worthwhile professional courses, finally? How many join better universities outside the country? How many have some family business to take up? A very small percentage, indeed. There is a population left behind.
Take the case of a professional course like medicine. We now have enough medical colleges accommodating students way above thousand mark. Do we have a commensurate number of slots in our job landscape? Add to it, there is a crowd of students that follow MBBS course within the country or abroad by paying for it. Where would they go after completing their degree? If this is the case with medicine, make a guess about other streams.
So merely dishing out figures and talking about some government schemes like Mission Yuva, this crisis is not finding a right expression. We need our own Adam Smiths to break their brains and explain the crisis to us. We need some extra ordinary stroke of leadership that approaches the problem through finer layers of societal mind. We need a fresh perspective on this, and a corresponding shift in our policies.
