Letter to Omar Abdullah Sahib!

Dear Omar Sahib,

I write to you today not as someone addressing a present Chief Minister, nor as someone speaking to a prominent political heir, but as one of the many unheard voices of Kashmiri youth, voices that have been drowning for years in silence, uncertainty, and broken assurances. You once said that “the idea of Kashmir is incomplete without the dreams of its youth.” For a long time, we believed in those words. We trusted that someone in the corridors of power understood our fears, our hopes, and our anxieties.

But today, as many of us stand in our late twenties and thirties, some having crossed even the upper age limits for government jobs, while holding degrees that gather dust, waiting endlessly for recruitment lists and results that never arrive, we feel abandoned by the very systems that once asked us to dream. We are a generation that grew up between the noise of conflict and the quiet brutality of unemployment. One wounded our bodies; the other wounded our futures.

Walk through the streets of Baramulla, Shopian, Kupwara, Pulwama or the crowded corners of Srinagar today and you won’t just see markets and lanes you’ll see a generation wandering without direction. You’ll see young men and women carrying files filled with certificates that have lost their value. You’ll see them moving from coaching centers to cafés, from JKSSB notifications to JKPSC postponements, from a flicker of hope to an all-too-familiar disappointment. Their eyes no longer carry rebellion; they carry exhaustion. Their hearts no longer hold anger; they hold a quiet, painful acceptance.

Let me share what this despair looks like in real life not in statistics, but in lived experiences. Not long ago, in a clothing shop in Baramulla, I met a young man with a Master’s degree in Economics. A boy who once dreamed of teaching, researching, shaping public policy. But when I saw him, he was arranging shirts for someone who hadn’t even finished high school. When I asked him how he felt, he gave a weary smile and said, what do I do? A degree is just paper now. That smile said more than his words. It carried the heartbreak of thousands of Kashmiri youths who feel betrayed by the very idea of merit.

But our struggle is not merely about unemployment. It is about dignity, something every society owes its youth, yet something systematically denied. We prepare for exams that get cancelled. We wait years for interview lists that never appear. We watch corruption decide our fate long before we enter the exam hall, the worst example being the PDP-era J&K Bank recruitment scandal. We refresh government websites as if refreshing might refresh our destinies.

In this endless cycle of waiting, something precious is taken from us our youth itself. What can a society promise its young people when every door they knock on has remained shut for years? When even the most talented among us spend their prime years waiting for a single opportunity?

This decay is not limited to jobs. It has seeped into our intellectual spaces too. When bookstores in Lal Chowk shut down, it wasn’t just a business closing; it was an obituary for a culture of reading, reflection, and intellectual growth. Today, reels dominate our evenings not because our youth have become shallow, but because reading demands stability and stability is the very thing that has been stolen from us.

Even our orchards, the backbone of Kashmir’s economy, have begun to fall apart. A farmer from Sopore told me recently, “Hamare ghar ka Khuda hi Hafiz.” His entire apple crop had rotted. But before talking about numbers, he spoke of survival. This collapse doesn’t just break farmers it breaks their children’s futures, the education and dreams that depend on those orchards.

And through all this, we, the youth, are tired. Truly tired. Tired of preparing for exams that lead nowhere. Tired of applying for jobs that don’t exist. Tired of systems that function like black holes. Tired of being told to “wait.” Tired of being used as election slogans. Tired of being seen as statistics, not human beings.

Omar Sahib, this letter is not meant to blame you alone. Governments of every shade past and present have failed us. Everyone spoke of empowering youth; no one built structures that could actually empower them. Everyone spoke of development; no one protected the dignity of young Kashmiris. But you still hold a unique space in the political memory of this region. Your voice once resonated with the hopes of young people. Your words once felt sincere. And it is because of that history that I write this letter not in anger, but in a fragile yet stubborn hope that you will speak again for this generation.

Because Kashmiri youth do not want sympathy. They want functioning institutions. They want swift, transparent recruitment. They want universities that don’t delay degrees for years. They want opportunities that honor their talent. They want a society where creativity, research, art, entrepreneurship, and literature are not luxuries but part of the ecosystem. They want leaders who understand that a young person without hope is a time bomb not exploding outward, but inward slowly destroying society.

Most of all, they want dignity. Dignity to dream. Dignity to breathe. Dignity to build a life not defined by humiliation.

You once said that frustration among youth is dangerous. Today, that frustration has matured into something deeper: resignation. Many have folded their dreams away. Many have settled for what they never wanted. Many have accepted a life far smaller than what they deserved. A generation should not be forced to shrink this way.

And so, I ask you, Omar Sahib, to raise your voice again not to score political points, not to counter opponents, but to place the crisis of Kashmiri youth at the center of every political conversation. We need leaders who talk not of power but of people. Not of past grievances but of future possibilities.

This letter carries the weight of years in which I watched bookstores close, apple farmers collapse, scholars give up their research, students lose their spark, and brilliant young minds bury their ambitions under the rubble of endless waiting.

Remember us this forgotten generation that waited for a dawn that never came. Carry our stories wherever you speak. Remind whoever holds power today or tomorrow that the failure of a generation is the slow death of a society.

We are not asking for miracles. We are only asking not to be erased.

With the last strands of hope, we still hold, A voice from the youth of Kashmir.