by Dr Inayat Ullah Wani
Kashmir’s reservation debate reflects a deeper crisis of scarce jobs, changing educational aspirations and limited private-sector growth, demanding evidence-based affirmative action and broader opportunities for youth.
There is something changing in the relationship between education and aspiration in Kashmir. For generations, education was regarded as the surest route to social mobility. A young person who did not inherit substantial land, capital or a family business could still acquire an education, obtain a professional qualification, compete for a government position and build a more secure life. In a region where the private economy remained relatively weak, government employment gradually became the principal destination of this aspiration. Today, however, that model is under considerable strain.
The number of educated young people entering the labour market has grown much faster than the number of secure and desirable government positions available to them, while the private sector has not expanded sufficiently to provide an alternative of comparable scale, security and social prestige. The result is an increasingly narrow employment funnel through which an expanding generation of educated youth is attempting to pass.
This is the context in which the debate over reservation, merit and higher education needs to be understood. Reservation is often discussed as if it were an isolated question of allocating seats or posts between competing categories. It is not. When opportunities are abundant, the method by which they are distributed may be less consequential. When opportunities are scarce, every seat and every government vacancy becomes intensely contested, and even a relatively small difference in the probability of selection can determine years of a young person’s life. In such circumstances, the reservation system inevitably becomes part of the larger economic question who gets access to scarce opportunities, and what happens to those who do not?
There is no serious argument for pretending that the historical inequalities which gave rise to affirmative action have disappeared. Social and educational disadvantage is real, and a formally identical competition between people who have grown up with profoundly different opportunities does not necessarily produce substantive equality. Reservation can therefore have a legitimate role in correcting accumulated disadvantage and improving representation. But there is another question that a society must also be willing to ask what happens when a system designed to compensate for unequal opportunity operates within an economy that is itself producing too few opportunities? Are we expanding opportunity, or are we increasingly distributing scarcity?
That distinction matters particularly in Kashmir. If ten thousand people compete for a hundred government jobs, changing the allocation mechanism can determine who receives those hundred jobs, but it cannot create the remaining 9,900 opportunities. If a university has a fixed number of seats, altering the admission formula does not increase the capacity of the institution. And if the private economy does not generate sufficiently attractive alternatives, the government job becomes disproportionately valuable, making every recruitment examination a source of enormous expectation and, inevitably, disappointment.
The consequences can reach much further than the recruitment process itself. Education can gradually cease to be viewed primarily as an investment in knowledge and become an extended preparation for employment examinations. A degree becomes a credential in a queue. A postgraduate qualification becomes another year of waiting. The question a student asks is no longer simply, “What can I learn?” but increasingly, “What will this qualification do for my chances of getting a government job?” When that happens on a sufficiently large scale, the problem is not merely unemployment. The meaning and incentive structure of education itself begins to change.
Kashmir Colleges
Recent developments in Kashmir’s higher-education system provide reason for concern, although the evidence does not justify declaring that higher education is already in terminal decline. In 2024, the Higher Education Department acknowledged a declining enrolment trend in government degree colleges, with particularly visible decreases in science and mathematics. Yet the subsequent figures show a recovery enrolment in J&K’s government degree colleges rose from 43,030 students in 2024 to 48,641 in 2025. More recent figures are still more encouraging.
During the first phase of undergraduate admissions for 2026-27, 47,150 students had taken admission in government degree colleges across the Union Territory, compared with around 40,800 in the corresponding phase of the preceding session, an increase of approximately 16 per cent. These figures are important because they prevent us from making an easy but inaccurate argument. Kashmir’s higher education is not simply collapsing. Demand remains strong in many institutions and programmes. The introduction of a centralised admission portal, the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme and changes in subject combinations may also have influenced recent enrolment patterns. At the same time, however, the system is displaying another phenomenon that deserves much more serious attention repeated notices for vacant seats and on-spot admissions at institutions that would traditionally have been regarded as among the more sought-after destinations for students.
The University of Kashmir’s admission records for 2026 contain repeated notices for on-spot admissions, applications against vacant seats and subsequent selection notifications. IUST has likewise issued several admission notices against vacant seats across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes during 2026. This does not by itself establish that students are abandoning higher education. Vacancies can arise because of demographic changes, expansion of seats, competition among institutions, changing course preferences, students going outside the region and a host of other factors. The point, therefore, is not to turn every vacant seat into evidence of educational decline. The point is that the phenomenon is sufficiently visible to demand systematic investigation.
The government and universities should be publishing programme-wise data showing the number of seats, applications, eligible candidates, admissions, vacant seats, cut-offs, dropout rates and eventual employment outcomes. Without such information, competing narratives remain largely anecdotal. One side can point to vacant seats and conclude that young people have lost faith in education; another can point to rising enrolment and conclude that everything is healthy. Both may be selectively correct. The more important question is what is happening beneath the aggregate numbers. Are students avoiding particular disciplines because they see little economic return from them? Are they choosing degrees with the expectation of government recruitment rather than intellectual or professional development? Are more capable students leaving the region? Are students increasingly selecting short-term, employment-oriented training over conventional degrees? And is the perceived return on a university education changing?
These questions take us directly to the employment problem.
Kashmir’s educated youth are not simply competing for jobs; they are competing for a very particular type of job. Government employment offers salary security, social status, relatively predictable career progression and, importantly, a degree of stability that many young people do not associate with the private sector. The J&K Economic Survey 2025-26 itself demonstrates both the scale of the employment challenge and the government’s growing emphasis on alternative employment. By November 2025, the Employment Department reported that 61,803 candidates had been counselled through its employment services. It also reported 6,476 units established under self-employment schemes, providing employment to 23,550 youth, while job fairs had generated 276 on-the-spot placements and recommendations for skilling. These are meaningful interventions, but their very scale illustrates the problem an economy cannot depend indefinitely on public recruitment to absorb every generation of educated job seekers.
The official recruitment record also reveals the importance attached to government employment. JKSSB’s official advertisement archive shows a steady stream of recruitment notifications across 2025 and 2026, covering posts ranging from laboratory and scientific assistants to engineers, clerical positions, health-related occupations and other services. Yet the existence of many notifications should not obscure the basic arithmetic the number of people aspiring to secure government employment is vastly greater than the number of positions that the state can sustainably provide.
That is the deeper source of frustration. Reservation may influence the distribution of available posts, but it cannot resolve the underlying shortage.
Opportunity Disturbed?
The reservation debate becomes particularly charged because the stakes are so high. J&K’s current reservation framework provides significant representation to several categories, with the government stating in 2026 that vertical reservations other than EWS are capped at 50 per cent, alongside separate EWS and horizontal provisions. The precise operation varies by recruitment and admission framework, but the broader reality is clear reservation is now a substantial component of the allocation of government employment and educational opportunities in the Union Territory.
It is therefore entirely legitimate to ask whether the system is achieving what it is intended to achieve. Are benefits reaching those who are genuinely most disadvantaged? Are first-generation learners moving upward? Are relatively better-off sections within beneficiary groups capturing a disproportionate share of opportunities? Are reservation policies periodically evaluated against educational outcomes and employment mobility? Are category boundaries still reflecting the social realities for which they were originally designed?
These are questions of policy evaluation, not attacks on any community.
Equally, it would be misleading to attribute all youth frustration to reservation. A young person who has spent five years preparing for government examinations and still has no job is facing a much larger structural problem than the reservation roster. Even if the reservation system were completely abolished tomorrow, there would still be too few jobs for the number of applicants. Competition would become more intense, not disappear.
This is why the phrase “merit versus reservation” is ultimately too narrow. The real question is how to build a society in which merit can operate meaningfully while historical disadvantage is not allowed to determine a person’s future. That requires both fair access and a much larger pool of opportunity.
Kashmir’s Intellectual Future?
The stakes are therefore larger than government recruitment.
Universities are supposed to be engines of intellectual and economic development. They should produce scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, administrators, writers and professionals. They should create knowledge, not merely distribute degrees.
There is a danger when the strongest incentive in the education system becomes the search for a government appointment. A student who believes that academic excellence has little relationship with opportunity may eventually decide that another degree is not worth the cost. A talented researcher may leave. An ambitious graduate may migrate. An entrepreneur may never attempt to build a company because the perceived risk of the private sector is too high compared with the security of government employment.
Over time, these individual decisions can affect institutions. If the most ambitious students leave, universities lose part of their competitive intellectual environment. If research opportunities remain weak, faculty recruitment becomes less competitive. If industry does not engage with universities, academic programmes become disconnected from the economy. If students see little relationship between what they study and what they can eventually do, motivation inevitably suffers.
This is how an education system can weaken without its buildings becoming empty.
But there is nothing inevitable about such a trajectory. The recent rise in enrolment demonstrates that demand for higher education remains strong. The question is whether that demand can be converted into genuine human-capital formation rather than simply larger numbers of degree holders.
Kashmir’s second challenge, therefore, is to create a second engine of social mobility alongside government employment.
That engine has to be the private economy.
The J&K government’s own economic survey increasingly emphasises entrepreneurship, self-employment, job fairs and skill development, while programmes such as PMEGP and JKREGP are being used to create new enterprises. But the scale and quality of private employment matter as much as the number of schemes. Kashmir needs enterprises capable of employing graduates in technology, healthcare, education services, tourism, horticulture and food processing, design, logistics, renewable energy, professional services, research and remote digital work. It needs universities that connect students with those sectors through internships, laboratories, incubation centres, research partnerships and placements.
A young Kashmiri should not have to choose between leaving the region or spending several years preparing for a government examination.
What Should Change?
The answer, therefore, cannot simply be to abolish reservation and assume that unrestricted competition will solve the problem. Nor can it be to keep expanding preferences while leaving the underlying employment scarcity untouched. Both approaches would address only one side of the problem.
The first requirement is to expand the opportunity pool. Government employment must remain an important component of the economy, but it cannot be the principal mechanism of upward mobility for an entire generation. Private investment, entrepreneurship, tourism beyond seasonal employment, horticulture value chains, technology, healthcare, professional services and export-oriented businesses need an environment in which they can create durable careers rather than only small pockets of self-employment.
The second requirement is to make affirmative action more evidence-based and continuously evaluated. Reservation should be examined through outcomes who benefits, who remains excluded, who completes education, who obtains employment and whether intergenerational mobility is actually occurring. Social justice should not be treated as a policy that requires no measurement. A policy designed to correct inequality becomes stronger, not weaker, when its outcomes are honestly evaluated.
The third is to strengthen education before the university gate. The most effective intervention for a disadvantaged child is often not a concession at the end of the educational pipeline but quality schooling at the beginning of it. If students arrive at university with severe deficiencies in mathematics, science, language or basic academic skills, merely giving them admission does not eliminate the disadvantage. It transfers it into the university.
Finally, universities themselves need to become more demanding and more useful. Admission should provide opportunity, but the institution should then provide rigorous teaching, meaningful assessment, research opportunities and professional exposure. Medical colleges should produce competent doctors; teacher-training institutions should produce capable teachers; universities should produce graduates who can create value beyond the public payroll.
The ultimate objective should not be a society in which reservation becomes unnecessary overnight. Nor should it be a society in which reservation becomes the permanent answer to every form of inequality. The objective should be a society in which background does not determine destiny, disadvantaged students receive genuine support, professional standards remain uncompromised and opportunities are sufficiently abundant that one person’s success does not require another person’s exclusion.
Kashmir’s problem is therefore larger than reservation and larger than merit. It is a problem of opportunity. When opportunities are scarce, every selection system becomes politically and socially charged. When opportunities are abundant, competition becomes less existential. The most sustainable way to reduce frustration is not merely to redistribute the same limited number of seats and jobs differently, but to increase the number and quality of opportunities available.
That is ultimately the test of Kashmir’s development.
If education is to remain the foundation of the region’s future human capital, young people must once again have reason to believe that learning is valuable in itself and economically meaningful afterwards. Universities must be places where intellectual ambition is rewarded, not merely waiting rooms for recruitment examinations. And government employment must become one avenue of success rather than the definition of success.
The question before Kashmir is not whether we should have competition or social justice. A functioning society needs both. The question is whether we can build an education and economic system in which competition is meaningful, affirmative action is genuinely corrective, professional competence remains non-negotiable and opportunity is no longer so scarce that an entire generation sees its future through the narrow window of a government recruitment notification.
That is the point at which the debate over reservation must ultimately lead not towards a different distribution of scarcity, but towards a Kashmir in which there is far less scarcity to distribute.
(The author is Assistant Professor, School of Economics, NMIMS, Navi Mumbai. Ideas are personal.)
