Lt Governor Manoj Sinha promising jobs to youth willing to shun violence amid a huge trust deficit is though similar to the promises made by several chief ministers of the erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state since bifurcated into two union territories, but the issue surrounding the seventy year old conflict in Jammu & Kashmir is not only about unemployment but of trust deficit created by the withdrawal of statehood and special status on August 5 last year. So the issue is not of reducing the trust deficit but addressing it with some political concessions taken away in just one stroke by the incumbent central government on August 5 last year. By all standards of understandabilities the trust deficit can’t be addressed by Lt Governor himself only but the measures to remove the trust deficit have to be taken the central government and supplemented by other measures by the Jammu & Kashmir Government. While the share of the local populations in government jobs has been already hugely neutralized with the application of a new hostile domicile law in Jammu & Kashmir, how come the youth willing to give up the path violence would believe the words of Lt Governor Manoj Sinha. As regards the LG’s promise on accommodation and adjustment of local youth in entrepreneurial activities undertaken by Jammu & Kashmir government, the engineering departments have already disillusioned youth by scrapping the engagement of self help groups (SHGs) in the construction works. Though a committee has been constituted by the Jammu & Kashmir Government only after the recent uproar in parliament over the withdrawal of almost one and a half decade old policy of the engagement of self help groups (SHGs) in the construction works of the engineering departments, but constituting committee instead of restoring the policy is sufficient enough to indicate that government may only partially restore it’s policy on engagement of SHGs in the construction works of the engineering departments.
Lt Governor’s policy of public reachout would restore the faith of the people in the working of the government only after the central government fulfills it’s own promise on statehood and reverses some of it’s hostile measures over jobs and electoral initiatives announced by it in recent months.
Such an approach is sufficient enough to indicate that Lt Governor too is trying to pursue the policy of half truths like many popular governments of the erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state and the successive central governments but the huge trust deficit created by the withdrawal of statehood and special status on August 5 last year can’t be reduced or fully addressed by the policy of half truths over jobs in government and entrepreneurial opportunities in the private sector. Lt Governor’s policy of public reachout would restore the faith of the people in the working of the government only after the central government fulfills it’s own promise on statehood and reverses some of it’s hostile measures over jobs and electoral initiatives announced by it in recent months.
