Despite being educated unemployment rate among Kerala youth huge: Shashi Tharoor
Kottayam (Kerala) (PTI): Unemployment rate among the youth in Kerala is huge and there is a need to make the state more attractive for its younger generation to prevent them from going outside for jobs, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor said on Monday.
Tharoor, speaking at the inauguration of the 146th Mannam Jayanthi celebration at the Nair Service Society (NSS) headquarters at Perunna in Changanassery here, said unemployment among the youth in Kerala was 40 per cent in June 2022.
Mannam Jayanthi is held to celebrate the birth anniversary of NSS founder and social reformer Mannath Padmanabhan.
He said only Jammu and Kashmir was in such a situation, but that was due to militancy problems there.
"No other state is showing such concerning figures of unemployment among the youth. In other states those uneducated or unskilled are the ones lacking jobs. However, in Kerala everyone is literate, educated and has passed class 10, yet a lot of them do not have jobs," the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.
Tharoor said 3.5 lakh professional and technical job-seekers, including 9,000 medical graduates, were registered as job-seekers in the southern state's employment exchange.
Of the 3.5 lakh job-seekers, around 71 per cent have ITI certificates, he added.
"This is the state of affairs in Kerala. Therefore, there is no doubt that the state needs to open its doors to bring in more investment. We need to create more employment opportunities," he said.
The MP said that a lot of youngsters are going outside the state for job opportunities and that should be seen as a loss for Kerala.
"We must make Kerala more attractive for our young people," was a solution he offered.
Sukumaran Nair, the general secretary of NSS, said during the event that when Tharoor came to contest polls from Thiruvananthapuram, he had called the latter 'Delhi Nair'.
"To rectify that mistake we have invited him here for this event. According to me, there is no one more competent to inaugurate the celebrations," Nair said.
The praise of Tharoor by Nair was welcomed by senior Congressman and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly V D Satheesan.
"I welcome any praise of a Congress leader by anyone here in Kerala," he told reporters.
Satheesan had recently initially expressed reservations over the Thiruvananthapuram MP's political outreach programmes in the southern state.
When the alleged rift between Satheesan and Tharoor was widely reported by the media, the LoP had refuted the same.
In his speech on the occasion, Tharoor also said Padmanabhan, who founded the NSS, had once observed that one Nair cannot see eye-to-eye with another.
He said though the observation was made more than a century ago, he has witnessed it during his political career -- an apparent dig at a few fellow Congressmen from the Nair community.
Interestingly, Satheesan also belongs to the Nair community.
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Right to vote under threat, must be made fundamental right: Cong's Jairam Ramesh
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Jairam Ramesh alleged on Thursday that the right to vote is under threat and the time has come when it should be made a fundamental right for citizens.
Speaking with reporters, Ramesh lashed out at Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, saying the Election Commission (EC) has never been as compromised as it has been under him.
"The rot started under his predecessor. This man is a player and not a neutral observer," the Congress leader said, slamming Kumar.
Kumar is completely compromised and has become a player in elections, he alleged.
"Home Minister Amit Shah had talked about three Ds -- detect, delete and deport. So we want to know how many non-Indian citizens have been detected, how many have been deleted and how many have been deported," Ramesh said, adding that the right to vote is now under threat.
On opposition parties submitting a fresh notice in the Rajya Sabha, seeking to move a motion for the CEC's removal, the Congress leader said they will continue to make efforts for Kumar's removal as he is "compromised".
Ramesh also batted for the right to vote to be recognised as a fundamental right.
"I believe that the time has come that the right to vote should be made a fundamental right. It is a statutory right, it is not a fundamental right. Fundamental rights are justiciable," he said.
The former Union minister said this was discussed in the Constituent Assembly, but it was eventually decided that it should be made part of the Constitution.
B R Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram had warned that in the future, governments might try to disenfranchise voters, he added.
"Once and for all, include the right to vote as a fundamental right for Indian citizens," Ramesh asserted.
