Kerala’s educated unemployment rate worrying; J&K only parallel: Tharoor

Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, has said Kerala’s unemployment is worrying and the state must be made more attractive so that the younger generation does not move out for better prospects.

Tharoor was speaking at the inauguration of the 146th Mannam Jayanthi celebration at the Nair Service Society (NSS) headquarters at Perunna, Changanassery, in Kottayam on Monday. He said unemployment among Kerala’s youth was 40 per cent in June 2022.

Mannam Jayanthi is held to celebrate the birth anniversary of NSS founder and social reformer Mannath Padmanabhan.

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Unemployment of qualified youths

Tharoor said in terms of unemployment, only Jammu and Kashmir was in a similar situation, but that was due to militancy problems. “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 X. Yet, a lot of them do not have jobs,” he elaborated.

The MP went on to cite some figures. He said 3.5 lakh professional and technical job-seekers, including 9,000 medical graduates, were registered as job-seekers in the 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.

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Tharoor said a lot of youngsters are leaving 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,” he offered.

Clash of Nairs

NSS general secretary Sukumaran Nair admitted that when Tharoor had come to contest the polls from Thiruvananthapuram, he had called the suave leader a “Delhi Nair.” He said Tharoor had been invited to the event so that they could “rectify that mistake.” “According to me, there is no one more competent to inaugurate the celebrations,” Nair said.

Senior Congressman and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, VD Satheesan, welcomed Nair’s praise for Tharoor. “I welcome any praise for 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, he had rubbished the claims.

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In an apparent dig at a few fellow Congressmen from the Nair community, Tharoor reminded the audience during his speech that NSS founder Padmanabhan had once observed that one Nair cannot see eye-to-eye with another. He added that though the observation was made more than a century ago, he had witnessed it during his political career.

Incidentally, Satheesan is also a Nair.

(With agency inputs)