Sunaina Mir
The only aspiration of a common middle class man is the attainment of a government job, irrespective of department he would join because government jobs have become the only parameter of success in our Indian society. It would not be wrong, if I say, education institutions in India are seen only as the way of getting jobs rather than the sites of spiritual enlightenment and salvation.
Day by day increasing poverty, starvation, misery and unemployment is pushing our literate youth towards the dark and gloomy world of depression. In order to kill that grave depression, our highly qualified youth is joining government offices instead of knowing that the wages are very low, with only one dream in their eyes that one day they would get permanent status and nominal salary at par their work. No doubt, government has regularized many contractual employees. A welcome step was taken by the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Manoj Sinha, in which he ordered regularisation of 12000 contractual employees of PDD department in the year 2022. That step has again filled the eyes of our left over 100000 contractual employees like NYC in education, sports, rural development departments, Rehbare jagalat in forest department and Rehbar-e-Sehat in Medical Department of Jammu and Kashmir with innumerable dreams of regularization.
There is nothing hidden in this fact that it is very difficult to carry out home expenses in a feeble salary of Rs 1500 or Rs 1300. The pain full story of low wagers does not even end here. Some of them have turned overage, some of them have even attained superannuation, a lot of them even lost their lives while working. In addition to this contractual employees are even unable to enter in matrimonial relationships because parents do not prefer to give their daughter in marriage to a contractual employee. Saturation has reached to such an extent that our PHD degree holder scholars are joining contractual services.
Here I want to ask a question to all of you people, what does a mother do in a situation where she has only one Rooti and four kids to feed? She would definitely divide the Rooti in four equal halves and distribute them equally amid her children. Similar is the case with our state of Jammu and Kashmir. Our state also has limited jobs and limited avenues. The state should implement a fixed salary law because there is no need to credit accounts of professors, lecturers, principals, Masters, MLAs, KAS, commissioners and other high officials Rs 100000+ as monthly salary and on the other hand our contractual with equal qualifications are getting only Rs 1300 as their monthly wage. The state government should fix all state employee’s salary to Rs 30000 because this much amount is more than enough to carry a comfortable life and more over every profession is equally important and significant for smooth functioning of any society. Fix and equal salary will further establish the example of dignity of every labour or profession for generations to come. This historic move by state will save huge amount of money which would be used to give normal salary to low wagers and also help to generate more jobs.
In the end, I want to say that it can never be humane to over feed some and leave many others to die out of starvation.
(The writer belongs to district Rajouri)
