With the spread of education in Kashmir, through public and private effort, we have now hardly any children left out of the formal school education. The result of this widespread education has been phenomenal in many ways. We have experienced a near revolutionary impact in all the segments of life – society, economy, and culture. But this gain in mass education is not supported by a matching creation of jobs, or professional institutions. The result of this mismatch is that we have a sizeable number of Kashmiri youth moving outside J&K, and also outside Indian to pursue careers, or follow professional courses. The most sought after course being MBBS. We have a good number of students from Kashmir taking admission in different medical colleges in countries like Bangladesh and Iran.

Though there is nothing wrong with our students going abroad to pursue higher studies, or take admissions in different professional colleges, but it brings its own share of problems. During past some months, or may be last some years, we have seen Kashmiri students getting stuck in different countries because of any unpleasant turn of events in those countries. We saw it when Bangladesh experienced a difficult situation. We experienced it when Ukraine war happened. We saw it during covid also. And we saw it when Iran was caught in a violent confrontation just recently.

Once again there is danger of war in Iran, and once again Kashmiri students pursuing professional courses, particularly MBBS, in Iran are faced with a hard choice. Either they have to return home and allow disruption in their studies take a toll on their career, or else they have to stay put and go through all the anguish in case a violent turn of events overtakes that country. In that case not only them, there families back home too are sure to suffer emotionally and psychologically. The Embassy of India asking the Indian nationals to leave Iran means that the Kashmiri students there are once again in a tough situation. CM Omar Abdullah underlining the same means the trauma is revisiting.

One can only pray that all the Kashmiri students studying in Iran return safely back home. The question of disruption in their professional studies remains though.

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