Local resources to generate employment

Despite coming from poor background, Archana Kumari (19) is ready to take the risk of a start-up business.

With the scourge of unemployment plaguing her village in the naxalite-hit Garhwa district of Jharkhand, Kumari, a college student, is currently camping at Shuklapur Gram in Dehra Dun to get new lessons in the local-based technologies for starting her own unit.

With the support of the central government, HESCO, a Dehra Dun-based NGO and Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan would be organising a workshop for Kumari along with 60 other young girls and boys from militancy-affected states like Jammu and Kashmir, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya to generate human resources and hone up their inherent entrepreneurship skills through technology intervention. Most of these youths are either in the teens or early twenties.

 

The main aims of this workshop are to explore new ventures on local resources and provide suitable business models, exposure to rural technologies and envisaging a future roadmap for shaping the rural economy. “The main problem in our area is unemployment due to which some youths have picked up guns. We want to do things so that prosperity comes to our area,” said Rimjhim Kumar, another girl from Jharkhand.

According to an estimate of the home ministry, about 35 districts have been affected by the insurgency in these states.

Union Secretary of Youth Affairs A K Upadhayay recently traveled to Shuklapur to discuss details regarding the new initiative with the doctor Anil P Joshi, who is heading HESCO, which has already set up scores of new watermills in Jammu and Kashmir with the support of the army.

“We are tapping energy, agriculture, handicrafts and khadi sectors where these youths can be trained for starting their own units,” said Joshi. After the workshop, the volunteers of HESCO along with central government officials would travel to these states to provide logistic as well as financial support for starting the new ventures at the doorsteps of these youths. “We see new ventures through various innovative technologies on watermills, bakery, electric-appliances, nursery, vegetable cultivation, furniture from local weed,” said Joshi.