Srinagar- Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday accused previous state governments of discouraging agriculture Start-Ups to explore entrepreneurship and self-employment, rendering the youth perpetually dependent on government jobs.
The Minster accused regional political parties of doing so to keep the youth bound to the “political masters of the day”. As a result, the region’s immense potential for entrepreneurship and self-livelihood remained unexplored, he said.
The minister made these remarks while addressing an interactive meet of Agricultural Start-Ups and farmers, organised jointly by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology (SKUAST).
Singh said that no government in any country can ensure 100 percent salaried government jobs to youth, but a responsible government plans to promote means of livelihood and this is precisely what the Modi government is trying to seek.
The minister said, in the past, the farmers and the agriculturists would largely depend upon the mood of climate and vagaries of nature for cultivation, but, in the last few years, new areas like, Lavender cultivation have been explored at a large scale both in the Kashmir valley in the areas around including Gulmarg as well as in the Jammu region in districts Doda and Reasi.
He said, that He said, a sustained awareness campaign needs to be launched among the youth and their parents to educate them that there are much more lucrative emoluments available through these self-livelihood and new Start-ups options and, therefore, they should not be led to waste their time and energy in protesting for government salaried jobs.
Reiterating that the farming of today is no longer the farming of yesterday, Singh said that the farmer today is actually an “agricultural technocrat” or an “agricultural Start-up” who has “the option of making handsome profits using the new technology and provisions introduced in the agricultural sector.”
The Government of India through CSIR, he said, is providing all the relevant financial and technical support for new modes of cultivation, multiple integrated farming and also hybrid farming which have the capacity to double farmers’ income by 2022.