Omar Govt’s flagship scheme has few takers in J&K

SKEWPY loses its sheen in red tape; MOU doesn’t crystallize in 9 months

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, May 15: In the next three months, architects of the coalition government’s flagship scheme would be celebrating anniversary of Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather’s announcement of a “revolutionary” employment policy, made in the summer session of the state Legislative Assembly last year. Notwithstanding the tall claims of the top government functionaries, there have been few takers to Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Programme for the Youth (SKEWPY). Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd over arrangement of financial support for the prospective entrepreneurs has not crystallized either---in the last nine months.

Out of nearly 600,000 unemployed youth, who had registered themselves at different tehsil and district centres in the state, just 2,000 have expressed intention to take benefit of the government’s free seed capital while establishing their business units. Surprisingly, just 2,000 more have come forward to take home Voluntary Service Allowance (VSA). One-time free seed capital for the educated entrepreneurs and monthly disbursement of VSA for the unemployed youth till, they get a job, were the key features of the much-hyped SKEWPY that was supposed to take off from April 1st, 2010.

Number of the entrepreneurs taking benefit of the government’s “historic policy” or pursuing their loan cases with the financial institutions on May 15th, as also the number of the unemployed youth taking home ‘berauzgaar bhatta’, is zero. Bureaucracy has been drafting and fine tuning necessary MOU with J&K Bank Ltd since September last year but the much awaited instrument, that would have facilitated Jammu & Kashmir State Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) to formulate and recommend Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) of the aspirants to the designated financial institution, has not seen the light of the day till date.

“Total of 2,371 unemployed youth have registered themselves with us and expressed willingness to take training from our field experts and seek loan from the bank with the advantage of free seed capital from the government. We have, of late, started entrepreneurship awareness programmes and modular training courses in a couple of sectorss. Yes, our DPRs are not ready as the aspirants are keen to first know about things like the interest rate, release of seed capital and scheme of recovery of loan etcetera”, Director EDI, Prof Mohammad Ismail Parray, told Early Times. He admitted that the enthusiasm, initially found among the aspirants, was not much visible today. “But, I am sure things are going to change in a few days from now”, Parray added. He sounded optimistic that the elegantly created Rs 12 Crore EDI complex in Srinagar, as well as in Jammu, would be “in full bloom” by next month.

Secretary to Government, Labour and Employment, Farooq Ahmed Pir, refused to accept that delay in signing of MOU with J&K Bank would adversely affect the process of training and recommending loan cases at EDI. He admitted that an amount of Rs 24 Crore, generously provided by Finance Miniser for immediate disbursement of the seed capital to the entrepreneurs, had remained unutilized in Civil Deposit Account as not a single case had been recommended to the bank. “We have provided Rs 1 Crore to EDI to take care of training courses in different fields and other logistics involved in selection of the candidates and formulation of their DPRs. MOU with J&K Bank is expected to be inked in a few days”, he asserted.

Department of Labour and Employment has been designated as the government’s nodal agency to operate SKEWPY while as EDI would be servicing and training the entrepreneurs interested in establishing their business in horticulture, agriculture, floriculture and many other sectors. Even as EDI had sought a sum of only Rs 10 Crore, Finance Minister had provided sizable amount of Rs 25 Crore for the purpose in days of Mr Rather’s commitment, made in the Budget session of Legislature in Srinagar last year. In the following Budget session, held in Jammu, Rather announced to provide Rs 50 Crore and made it clear that money would be no problem in implementation of SKEWPY.

Secretary Labour & Employment revealed that not more than 2,000 educated youth had come forward to take home VSA. “We were expecting some 40,000 applicants. Just a little over 2,000 have come forward to claim VSA”, he said and described this remarkably low response to SKEWPY as “surprising”. Most of the educated unemployed youth are still pursuing government jobs as the most stable and assured source of income. According to analysts, they are erroneously labouring under the impression that accepting VSA or free seed capital would make them disqualified for a government job. Red tapeism is categorized as another dampener.

Under SKEWPY, state government is committed to provide non-refundable seed capital equivalent to 35% of the project cost upto a maximum of Rs 3.00 Lakh to undergraduates and graduates, Rs 5.00 Lakh to postgraduates and Rs 7.50 Lakh to graduates/ postgraduates in medicine, engineering, Information Technology and management. In particular cases, upper ceiling has been fixed as Rs 10.00 Lakh. Candidates of 18-37 year age group with minimum qualification of 10+2 would be entitled to the benefit.

Sources in the government, however, insisted that “a section of bureaucracy” was bent upon failing the Omar Abdullah government’s flagship employment scheme. “Even the draft of the MOU has been shuttling between dozens of offices at snail’s pace. In September 2009, Government had made it clear that the scheme would be ceremonially unveiled on December 5th last year. Later, it made a commitment of starting off the scheme from day one of the next financial year. Why did bureaucracy waste nine months in the process and still the MOU is nowhere in sight?”, asked a middle rung official at Civil Secretariat. “Such decisions are not taken at the clerical level. Had there been any seriousness, administrative Secretaries of all the concerned departments would have held a meeting, finalized the draft and got it inked with J&K Bank”, he complained.

“In this case, at least, J&K Bank is not at fault. Government has proposed to it that the bank would be the financial institution for SKEWPY on the condition that it would sanction loan to all the recommended candidates with its eyes shut but, at the same time, take full responsibility of recovery. This kind of a dictation would not be acceptable to any bank”, said another official. However, he added, government should negotiate the rate of interest to 8.5% and insist that the same be capped for 3 years as per RBI guidelines for such micro financing in the country.

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