Harish Rawat claims he gave jobs to 32.5 thousand people during his tenure in Uttarakhand

Former chief minister of Uttarakhand addressing the delegates of Hitkar Himalaya at Constitution Club, New Delhi on 29th April. Harish Rawat claims that he had given employment to 32 thousand inhabitants of Uttarakhand with 12.500 employment in just the education department. He enhanced the pensions of the sr ctizens and widows from 1.5 lakh numbers to seven lakhs and increased the pension limit per person from Rs 200 per month to one thousand. The former UK CM was expressing his eloquent views at the seminar of the NGO called HITKAR HIMALAYA at Constitution Club in New Delhi yesterday. The topic of the seminar was, ” Increasing migration in Uttarakhand,”

Rawat said there were two types of migration from the hills during the last 18 years, one migration of capable, qualified and skilled people and another of unskilled persons. While the exodus of skilled population was 80% , the percentage of the migrated unskilled n illeterate population was just 20%.

He emphasised on agricultural and animal husbandary development in the hills and proposed setting up of good number of wineries in the state to derive fruit wine oriented profit to encourage monetary output n employment.

He said introduction of adventure tourism, home stay tourism and agricultural development is the need of the hour to encourage reverse migration.

Rawat lauded the efforts of the mushroom girl Divya Rawat who’s tremendously doing an appreciative job in the field of local vegetation and mushroom production, thus encouraging the young generation to return to villages.

He said there is no dearth of budget and finance in the state and all the talks of budgetory constraints are false notions but the actual need is to formulate the people and environmental friendly developmental schemes that can guarantee employment as well.

He urged the people to come back to the villages and contribute in the over all development of the state. Rawat further said its ironical that I m addressing u here and giving suggestions for development but am not able to convince my own villagers.

He concluded by catagorically saying that what we need today is, creation of a collective wisdom amongst the people living in towns, cities and metropolises to return back to Uttarakhand at least after retirement.

If not that, then at least, they should visit their respective villages once in few months and stay for few days to provide impetus to the reverse migration efforts n initiatives of the governments represented by whichever party. Others who spoke on the ocassion were Lt. General Mohan Chandra Bhandari, journalist and columnist Adwaita Kala, Lt General n expert on Indo China relations Dr. Sheru Thapliyal, Rotu Khanduri Bhushan, MLA from Yamkeshwar, Garhwal n daughter of the MP, Pauri, Garhwal and former chief minister Uttarakhand, President of Hitkar Himalaya Sudhir Bahuguna and others.

It may be recalled that Hitkar Himalaya social organisation has grown 25 years old and is fully devoted to the noble cause of organising unlimited number of medical camos in the distant villages of Uttarakhand and providing scholarship to umpteen number of poor and economically deprived students. zthe organisation comprises of sr Army, Navy, Airforce and government officers who’ve retired now and intellectuals including journalists n entrepreneurs, from across the country with the Uttarakhand origin.

Now, I leave it for the readers to assess and analyse themselves and respond as to how far he’s honest in his utterances.
SUNIL NEGI, PRESIDENT, UTTARAKHAND JOURNALISTS FORUM