It is still a suggestion and may not go through as one lakh computers will add to the project costs.
As another policy intervention, Jairam had suggested that the entire identification and selection process for new trainees will now be done through Panchayats. His idea was that it will help the PRIs to feel empowered. But Chief Minister Omar Abdullah strongly opposed the idea insisting that it will add the political compulsion element in the process and lead to its failure. “I would request that the existing mechanism of selecting beneficiaries be done through merit only,” he said. “Political intervention will push the scheme to failure.”
“While we are implementing the scheme, we are witnessing a change, more of a psychological one,” Jairam told the students in the University of Kashmir. “Initially, the people were unwilling to move out of Srinagar but now they are interested and I believe within next few years we will make efforts to fly them out to places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi for work.” The minister has already started working to network Kashmiri diaspora on this front even as the state’s own oversees corporation is still busy in meeting and hammering out its mandate more clearly.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah himself also feels a change. He was part of an Udaan (a Hiamayat cousin being implemented by MHA, the scheme is aimed at training and absorbing 40 thousand graduates and post-graduates with MNCs and blue-chip companies in five years) function in Kolkata last week when the first batch selected under the programme completed their training.
“I was amazed what I saw after they encountered another culture,” Omar said. “In the first batch of 70 there was not a single girl and 96 percent of them got jobs strictly on basis of their merit,” Omar said. “Now I am told there are nearly 20 girls in the second batch of 70.”
The latest on Himayat front is that the union Rural Development Ministry has initiated a handshake with various institutions that are running orphanages in the state or supporting the destitute youth without dislocating them. “We want to help these boys and girls once they pass the matriculation,” Jairam said. “They need to be helped so that they stand up on their legs and Himayat is the best way out.” A study is currently on progress to see what these boys and girls are doing once they come out of the orphanages or when the NGOs snap support to them.
