Skills, Not Just Degrees, Can Tackle Youth Unemployment

Too many young people in Kashmir are educated but unemployed. They have degrees. They have certificates. But they don’t have jobs. And this gap is slowly turning into something worse – frustration, hopelessness and, in many cases, depression. The problem is not that our youth lack potential. The problem is that we have trained them for jobs that don’t exist. For decades, the only dream we sold them was a government job. Study hard, get a degree, wait for an advertisement, apply, hope. But government jobs are limited. And when lakhs of young people compete for a few thousand posts, most are left behind. Not because they are not capable, but because the system failed to prepare them for anything else. This is where skill education comes in. And this is where the idea of demand-driven subjects in colleges makes sense. Why are we forcing students to study subjects that lead nowhere? Why not teach agriculture, horticulture, tourism, music – subjects that actually have scope in Kashmir? Why not give them practical training that helps them start something of their own? The government says it is working on this. Colleges are being asked to introduce subjects students actually want to study. Faculty is being provided. Infrastructure is being improved. Enrolment has gone up by 17 per cent. These are good signs. But we need to move faster. Unemployment is not just an economic problem. It is a social problem. An idle mind is not just unproductive – it is vulnerable. Young people who sit at home waiting for jobs that never come are easy targets for drugs, depression and despair. The answer is not more degrees. The answer is skills. The answer is self-reliance. The answer is teaching our youth how to create jobs, not just how to seek them. We need to stop producing graduates who can only wait. We need to start producing young people who can build.