Srinagar

Army chief General Bipin Rawat Tuesday said there is unemployment in other parts of the country as well. Youngsters there don’t pelt stones. “Kashmiris try to shield militants and pelt stones and it is nothing new. Stones are easily available to them.” a news-gathering agency IANS report said.

The Army chief was interacting with students from Chhattisgarh who were on a trip to Delhi.

He said decades of militancy has “shattered” the education system in Jammu and Kashmir and this is one of the factors behind stone-pelting protests in the state.

One of the students asked him a question on frequent stone-pelting incidents in the Kashmir Valley to which Gen Rawat replied that Kashmiris were being fed with misinformation that India was anti-Muslim and those who eat beef were being killed, the report said.

“Education there (Kashmir) is shattered. Most of the schooling is done through madarassas, which cannot get you good jobs.”

He said the Army had two ways of dealing with the situation.

“The harsh way or the other way is to make them understand that what they are doing is wrong. We bring some of the people from there to Delhi to show we don’t have Army on every corner here as Delhi is peaceful. If Kashmir is also peaceful, the Army will be taken away from there.”