‘Become Job Providers Rather Than Job Seekers'

India’s longest serving chief minister (since 1994) Pawan Kumar Chamling, of Sikkim, talks to BW Businessworld’s Ashish Sinha on the benefits of organic farming, Sikkim’s thriving pharmaceutical industry and its thrust on education, among other things. Excerpts:

- Ashish Sinha

​​​​​​You continue to be India’s longest serving CM. How do you manage the aspirations of the youth?

When I came to power in 1994, I coined a slogan: ‘Desh hamara Hindustan, Sikkim hamara Sukhistan’ (Our country is Hindustan, Sikkim is our land of peace). Despite being a state with international borders on three sides, Sikkim today is a land of peace and tranquility.

Under the SDF government, the people of Sikkim have been emotionally integrated with India. We are proud of the fact that Sikkim has outperformed the national average and leads most states on a broad range of social parameters. Development and empowerment of youth is our key focus and we have introduced various policies for this.

We are also working on a law that will make it compulsory for private companies to offer 90 percent jobs to locals. There have been numerous stories of successful young entrepreneurs from the state. However, a majority of the youth population still sees government jobs as the ideal career. I urge the students and the youth to exploit the unlimited prospects for entrepreneurship in sectors such as tourism, hospitality, agri-business, and several others areas. I urge our youth to become job providers rather than job seekers.

Sikkim, over the past few years, has positioned itself as India’s only organic driven agricultural state. How has the state benefited benefitted from it?