Kashmir’s young entrepreneurs are being urged to build businesses and create jobs. Many say they are still being asked to mortgage their futures first, Tabish Khan reports.

In Kashmir, entrepreneurship is often spoken of as a solution.

It appears in policy speeches, government brochures, bank advertisements and employment summits as a promise large enough to absorb a generation’s anxiety: build something of your own, create jobs, innovate locally, stay rooted. For a region with a young population and limited formal employment, the entrepreneur has become both economic actor and civic hope.

But for many in Jammu and Kashmir trying to start a business, that promise still begins with the same question at the bank counter:

What can you pledge?

A family home. A piece of land. An orchard. Property papers carried in folders and unfolded across desks.

The collateral, many say, is often requested before the conversation truly begins.

On Friday, the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) carried that frustration to policymakers in person, urging Parliament to address what it described as the continued failure of collateral-free lending to reach entrepreneurs in the region despite the existence of national credit guarantee schemes meant to enable exactly that.

Meeting Tiruchi Siva, chairperson of the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry, along with other members of Parliament reviewing the Credit Guarantee Scheme for MSMEs in Jammu and Kashmir, the chamber submitted a detailed memorandum arguing that the promise of accessible business credit remains incomplete on the ground.

“Banks are still demanding collateral from borrowers even for loans fully covered under the Credit Guarantee Scheme,” KCCI president Javid Ahmad Tenga told the panel. “This defeats the entire purpose of the scheme. Young entrepreneurs in Kashmir must be able to access credit without pledging their homes and properties.”

The concern is not simply administrative. It is deeply personal.

For many first-generation entrepreneurs in Kashmir, access to capital determines whether an idea becomes a workshop, a processing unit, a tourism venture, a craft business, a start-up—or remains only a notebook calculation.

Unlike established business families with assets to leverage, younger borrowers often approach banks with business plans, technical skills and ambition, but little collateral in the traditional sense. The very demographic most frequently encouraged to become “job creators,” they say, is often least equipped to meet conventional lending conditions.

The result can be paralysis.

Businesses stall before launch. Expansion plans are postponed indefinitely. Loan applications move through long cycles of scrutiny or are quietly dropped. Families weigh whether risking inherited property is worth uncertain approval.

And many decide it isn’t.

KCCI’s memorandum acknowledged that lending under the Credit Guarantee Scheme has grown in Jammu and Kashmir in recent years – from Rs 6110 crore to Rs 9830 crore over three financial years – but argued that the increase masks a deeper imbalance in access and implementation.

According to the chamber, the distribution of that credit remains heavily concentrated.

KCCI praised J&K Bank, noting that it accounted for more than sixty-six per cent of the total credit disbursed under the scheme in the Union Territory. But it also raised concern over what it described as minimal participation from several large national banks, which entrepreneurs say has narrowed real financing options in a region where institutional credit already feels difficult to access.

The chamber has now sought annual compliance audits of banks operating in Jammu and Kashmir under the CGTMSE framework, alongside fixed timelines for loan disposal – 21 days for loans up to Rs 25 lakh and 30 days for loans up to Rs 2 crore – with written explanations made mandatory in cases of rejection.

Behind those demands lies a wider sentiment shared by much of Kashmir’s business community: that policy announcements have moved faster than implementation.

In 2021, the Centre introduced the New Central Sector Scheme for Industrial Development of Jammu and Kashmir with an outlay of Rs 28,400 crore, positioning it as a major investment and industrial stimulus package for the region.

Five years later, many entrepreneurs say access remains uneven.

KCCI has now asked for an additional Rs 75,000 crore under the scheme, with a quarter reserved specifically for local entrepreneurs, arguing that a large number of eligible businesses remain unable to benefit because they cannot secure financing.

For many in the Valley, the challenge is not lack of enterprise.

Kashmir’s business ecosystem is young, increasingly educated and often highly adaptive. Across the region, entrepreneurs are building ventures in food processing, logistics, e-commerce, handicrafts, renewable products, IT services, tourism and manufacturing. Many are doing so amid political uncertainty, seasonal disruptions, high freight costs and limited private investment.

What they continue to seek, business leaders say, is not subsidy alone – but trust.

Trust in the form of institutional backing.

Trust in the form of credit without excessive suspicion.

Trust that policy designed in New Delhi can arrive in Srinagar without being diluted by procedure.

“Kashmir has a young and skilled entrepreneurial population,” Tenga said. “What it needs is fair access to finance and institutional support.”

That support, if it comes, could shape more than balance sheets.

In Jammu and Kashmir, a small business is rarely just a business. It is often a family’s principal source of income, a source of local employment, and an act of economic persistence in a place where uncertainty frequently outpaces planning.

Which is why access to credit carries meaning beyond finance.

It determines whether a workshop opens its shutters.

Whether machinery is installed. Whether wages are paid. Whether an idea survives long enough to become an enterprise. And whether the next generation is asked to build – or merely to wait.

About the Author

Tabish Khan is a multi-media journalist whose work moves fluidly across text, video, and the fast-evolving grammar of social media. With postgraduate degree in Convergent Journalism, her storytelling often bridges traditional field journalism with platform-driven formats – short-form video, visual explainers, and audience-first storytelling