The Struggle for Work and Worth in Kashmir

Degrees hang on walls, dreams turn to smoke, and still the young of Kashmir rise each morning, carrying both hope and heartbreak in equal measure.

- Falak Fayaz

At twenty, life should open like a window. You study hard, finish college, and hope the world will make space for you.

But in Kashmir, twenty feels more like standing in a long corridor where every door stays closed. The sound of possibility is missing.

What fills the air instead is the shuffle of shoes outside employment offices, the low buzz of phones with new job alerts, and the same question playing in everyone's mind: Where do we go from here?

When there is no work for the hands, the heart begins to sink.

Jammu and Kashmir's unemployment rate stands at 17.1 percent, nearly double the national average, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. The numbers tell one story, the faces tell another.

There is an engineer driving a cab, a postgraduate selling apples, and a teacher waiting for a call that never comes.

These are not people without ambition. They studied, prepared, and waited. The system simply stopped meeting them halfway.

A graduate from Sopore said it best: "We were told to build our wings, but no one gave us the sky."

Education once felt like a sacred promise in Kashmir. Parents sold land, took loans, and believed that degrees would bring respect and stability.