Employment plan rolled out for job-starved Kashmiri youth

New Delhi/Srinagar, March 3 (IANS) An expert group headed by former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor C. Rangarajan Thursday rolled out an employment plan for the youth in job-starved Jammu and Kashmir, envisaging vocational training for up to 100,000 of them in the next five years. The Rangarajan committee report, which was released simultaneously in Srinagar and New Delhi, assumes significance because the state, according to official findings, has some 500,000 jobless youth who are often targeted for recruitment by militant outfits to be their overground workers.  The six-member Rangarajan committee was set up in August 2010 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was to submit its report within three months. Manmohan Singh had last week in parliament said the government would do everything to provide avenues for gainful employment to the youth in state. 'If we can create jobs for a lakh of students from the (Kashmir) Valley and other parts of Kashmir, I dare say it will change the mental make-up or the mindset of the Kashmiri people,' he said in his address to parliament.