This summer in Delhi, a movement born from an insult became a force strong enough to pull two Union ministers to a negotiating table. 

The Cockroach Janta Party took its name from a Chief Justice’s remark comparing unemployed youth to cockroaches, turned that line into a slogan, and marched ten thousand strong on Parliament over leaked papers in NEET and CBSE. 

Police responded with tear gas and batons. Protesters got hurt, and they also got heard. 

Activist Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike stayed on front pages for weeks. In Bihar, and now in Jharkhand, aspirants have followed the same road over BPSC irregularities and delayed results, taking their anger onto the street and into the political calendar. 

The country watched them do it, whatever came of it.

Kashmir’s young people live with a heavier load of the same grievances and none of that visibility. Start with the government’s own numbers. 

The Periodic Labour Force Survey put urban youth unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir at 32 percent for the 15-to-29 age group, the highest of any state or union territory in the country and close to double the national figure. 

Months later, when the J&K government answered a question in the Legislative Assembly on the same subject, it put the overall unemployment figure at 6.7 percent, still nearly twice the national average of 3.5 percent, an admission delivered in a written reply rather than a press conference.

Now consider what happens to the young people who try to escape that number through a government exam, the one channel supposed to run on merit alone. 

The Sub-Inspector recruitment of 2022 collapsed under a CBI investigation........

© Kashmir Observer