As the industrial policy for J&K enters review, stakeholders are calling for growth that is wider, fairer and built to last. Danish Mohiuddin reports.

Ahead of the high-level review meeting on the 28,400-crore New Central Sector Scheme (NCSS) for J&K reportedly scheduled to be chaired by the Union Home Minister on May 30, industry stakeholders and experts have expressed hope that the review process would address certain emerging concerns relating to balanced industrial growth, revival of existing enterprises and equitable distribution of incentives across J&K.

The industrial package announced by the Government of India in 2021 is widely acknowledged by business circles as one of the most significant economic initiatives undertaken for J&K in recent decades. 

Stakeholders believe that the scheme has helped revive investor confidence, generate industrial interest and create a positive atmosphere for economic activity in the region.

However, while appreciating the initiative, industry observers maintain that the evolving investment pattern under the scheme also highlights the need for a more region-sensitive and balanced approach going forward.

According to industry experts, one of the principal objectives behind the launch of the scheme was to take industrialisation to block and district levels across J&K. 

Nevertheless, investment proposals approved so far reportedly indicate concentration in selective industrial pockets possessing relatively better infrastructure and connectivity, while several districts continue to witness comparatively limited industrial response.

Economic analysts and stakeholders believe that a district-sensitive allocation model could help ensure more balanced industrial growth.

Some industry representatives are of the opinion that the overall package, if notionally distributed across all the 20 districts of J&K, would have encouraged investors to spread industrial activity more evenly across J&K instead of concentrating in limited locations.

They suggest that any future enhancement or expansion of the package may consider this principle to ensure wider geographical distribution of industrial investments and employment opportunities.

Another issue increasingly being highlighted by stakeholders relates to the emerging challenge of unequal incentive structures within the industrial sector.

According to business representatives, while the New Central Sector Scheme has undoubtedly generated optimism and investment interest, a substantial number of enterprises that had registered within the prescribed time frame reportedly remained outside the approved list due to limitation of funds. 

Simultaneously, thousands of existing industrial units that have survived decades of extraordinary disruptions continue to remain beyond the ambit of meaningful incentive support despite operating under the same difficult economic conditions.

Industry observers point out that coexistence of two sharply differentiated incentive regimes within the same industrial ecosystem may unintentionally create distortions on the ground.

Enterprises operating side by side under identical geographical, logistical, and economic disadvantages may eventually face vastly different cost structures and competitive capacities depending solely upon whether they were accommodated within the approved incentive framework. 

Experts believe that such disparities may adversely affect industrial balance, discourage revival of existing enterprises and create uneven competitive conditions within the local industrial sector over time.

Business circles therefore emphasise that sustainable industrialization in J&K requires a more comprehensive and inclusive policy approach covering not only newly approved units but also eligible units left out despite timely registration, existing enterprises undertaking revival and expansion, and prospective units in underdeveloped districts. 

According to stakeholders, industrial policy in a geographically disadvantaged and sensitive region like J&K must function as an instrument of broad-based economic stabilization and balanced regional development rather than remaining confined to selective pockets alone.

Another issue being strongly highlighted by stakeholders relates to the condition of existing industrial units in J&K. 

Business representatives point out that while new investments are important, revival and strengthening of existing enterprises is equally critical for sustainable industrialisation.

According to industry estimates, nearly 40,000 industrial and business units in J&K possess substantial assets and infrastructure on ground, many of which have suffered severe stress over the past three decades due to prolonged disturbances, repeated shutdowns, floods, economic disruptions, policy uncertainty and financial distress. 

Stakeholders argue that revival, modernisation, rejuvenation and expansion of these units could generate large-scale employment and economic activity by utilising already existing industrial infrastructure and entrepreneurial capacity.

Experts believe that a dedicated revival and rehabilitation corpus for existing industrial units could significantly improve capacity utilisation, revive stressed enterprises, and create employment at comparatively lower cost and within shorter timelines than creation of entirely new infrastructure.

Industry circles have also stressed the need for stronger market support for local enterprises. Stakeholders have suggested that Central Public Sector Enterprises, PSUs, and major executing agencies operating in J&K may be encouraged to procure part of their requirements through local industrial units and contractors in accordance with MSME promotion objectives.

Observers maintain that sustainable industrialisation in J&K requires a balanced policy framework that simultaneously supports new investments, revival of existing enterprises and assured market access for local industry. 

Stakeholders have expressed hope that the forthcoming review meeting would provide an opportunity to further strengthen the industrial policy framework of J&K in a manner that is equitable, regionally balanced and employment-oriented, while building upon the positive momentum already created by the Centre’s industrial development initiatives in J&K.

About the Author

A postgraduate in Convergent Journalism, the author approaches storytelling as a visual and narrative craft. With a strong interest in cinematography and filmmaking, his work often lingers on the human dimensions of news. Drawn to stories that matter to people, he writes with an eye for both movement and meaning.

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

As rising fuel prices ripple through transport, trade, and household budgets, Tabish Khan captures how global oil shocks are quietly reshaping everyday survival in Kashmir.

Long before the official announcement began circulating across television tickers and finance apps, taxi drivers in Srinagar already seemed to know something was coming.

At a crowded petrol station near Rajbagh, motorists waited with unusual impatience, engines idling in restless lines. Men leaned out of windows asking attendants whether prices would rise after midnight. Some demanded full tanks. Others filled plastic cans “just in case.” Rumours travel quickly in Kashmir, especially rumours tied to survival.

By afternoon, the government confirmed it: petrol and diesel prices would increase by three rupees per litre, the first major hike in more than four years.

In New Delhi, the increase was explained through the language of economics – global crude oil prices, supply disruptions, refining losses, geopolitical instability in West Asia. But in Kashmir, where distance itself carries a price, fuel is never merely about fuel. It is about movement. It is about apples reaching mandis before rotting. About trucks crossing the Jawahar Tunnel. About office workers commuting through Srinagar traffic. About bakeries turning on ovens before dawn. About generators humming during power cuts in winter. About whether families postpone travel, weddings, deliveries, ambitions. And increasingly, it is about anxiety.

The hike arrives at a moment when Kashmir’s economy already feels suspended between exhaustion and adaptation. Officially, inflation remains moderate. Officially, economic indicators show resilience. Officially, tourism numbers continue to break records. But beneath the optimism lies a quieter reality familiar to nearly every Kashmiri household: life has become relentlessly expensive. Fuel merely exposes it more visibly.

At a transport stand in Srinagar’s Parimpora area, truck operators spent Friday afternoon recalculating freight costs on scraps of paper and phone calculators. Diesel prices matter profoundly in Kashmir because almost everything consumed in the Valley arrives through mountainous roads dependent on trucks. Vegetables from Punjab. Construction material from Jammu. Medicine, electronics, packaged food, fuel cylinders – entire supply chains climb toward Kashmir through fragile highways vulnerable to landslides, snowfall, and political disruptions.

When diesel rises, the Valley feels it twice.

“We are already surviving on narrow margins,” said Javed Ahmad, a truck owner from south Kashmir waiting beside his vehicle loaded with apples headed toward Delhi. “Now transport costs will rise again. Eventually everything becomes expensive for ordinary people.”

In Kashmir, inflation often arrives indirectly. First fuel rises. Then freight costs climb. Then fruit becomes slightly costlier, school transport fees increase, grocery prices inch upward, bakery ovens become more expensive to operate, and suddenly families discover that monthly budgeting has turned into mathematics of compromise.

The government describes increase as “calibrated,” an attempt to partially relieve losses faced by state-run oil companies without causing a major inflationary shock. Those losses are undeniably severe. Indian oil retailers have reportedly been losing enormous sums as global crude prices surged following conflict in West Asia, where attacks involving Iran, Israel, and the United States disrupted one of the world’s most critical oil corridors.

At the peak of tensions, crude prices soared above 120 US dollars per barrel.

The Strait of Hormuz – a narrow waterway most Kashmiris will never see – suddenly began influencing how much an auto-rickshaw driver in Srinagar pays at the pump.

This is the strange intimacy of globalisation: wars in distant deserts echo inside Himalayan kitchens.

For much of the past four years, India avoided major fuel price hikes despite global volatility. Retail prices remained politically frozen during elections and periods of public sensitivity. Oil companies absorbed losses while governments reduced excise duties to cushion consumers.

But eventually arithmetic catches up with politics.

Earlier this week, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri acknowledged that state-run oil companies were collectively losing around one thousand crore rupees per day. Industry estimates suggested losses of over forty rupees per litre on diesel before Friday’s revision.

Such numbers are abstract until translated into ordinary life.

At a bakery in downtown Srinagar, owner Adnan Sofi said transportation and fuel-linked costs have already transformed the economics of running small businesses. Flour delivery costs have increased repeatedly over the past two years. Electricity remains unreliable in many areas, forcing some businesses to depend on generators. LPG cylinder prices have also climbed.

“You cannot increase prices endlessly because customers are already struggling,” he said while removing trays of bread from an oven glowing orange in predawn darkness. “So businesses absorb pressure until they can’t anymore.”

Across Kashmir, small businesses operate in precisely this condition: perpetual compression.

The Valley’s economy possesses a peculiar fragility because it depends heavily on sectors vulnerable to uncertainty – tourism, horticulture, handicrafts, transport, and retail trade. Most businesses are small-scale. Savings are limited. Employment remains unstable. Fuel hikes therefore ripple faster through Kashmir than through more industrialised economies with broader buffers.

For middle-class families, the burden appears less dramatic but more psychologically exhausting.

In Srinagar’s uptown neighbourhoods, where aspirations increasingly resemble those of metropolitan India, fuel prices shape daily routines in subtle ways. Parents reconsider long drives. Young professionals calculate commuting costs more carefully. Ride-sharing increases. Weekend travel declines. Household budgets stretch thinner beneath school fees, rising food prices, rent, healthcare costs, and stagnant salaries.

The emotional texture of inflation is rarely captured in official statistics.

Economists measure percentages. Families measure sacrifices.

At a fuel station in Hyderpora, a university student filling a scooter spoke about cancelling plans for coaching classes farther from home because transportation had become unaffordable. Nearby, a cab driver complained that customers resist fare increases even as operational costs surge.

“People think drivers are greedy,” he said. “But fuel, repairs, everything has become expensive. How do we survive?”

Kashmir’s dependence on private transport has grown dramatically over the past decade. Urban expansion, weak public transportation, and rising aspirations have filled roads with cars and motorcycles. Srinagar traffic increasingly resembles the congestion of larger Indian cities, except here movement occurs within a geographically constrained valley already struggling with infrastructure pressure.

Fuel therefore occupies a strange symbolic place in Kashmiri life. It represents mobility, but also vulnerability.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently urged Indians to reduce fuel consumption, use public transport, and adopt work-from-home practices where possible. Such appeals may resonate in metropolitan centres equipped with corporate flexibility and expanding transit systems. In Kashmir, however, economic life still depends heavily on physical movement through difficult terrain.

Distance remains expensive here.

And yet, beneath public frustration, there is also resignation. Kashmiris are intimately familiar with forces beyond their control shaping everyday existence – weather, conflict, political decisions, blocked highways, internet shutdowns, uncertain markets. Global oil prices merely become another layer of unpredictability folded into ordinary survival.

What makes the current moment especially unsettling is not simply the fuel hike itself, but what it signals about the future.

Worldwide, energy markets are entering an era of instability shaped by geopolitics, climate transitions, shipping disruptions, and competition over resources. India imports most of its crude oil. Kashmir, distant from ports and industrial corridors, experiences the downstream consequences intensely.

Already, economists warn that rising fuel prices could push inflation higher in coming months through freight and logistics costs. Wholesale inflation has accelerated sharply. Retail inflation, though comparatively moderate, continues creeping upward.

For Kashmir’s young generation – already navigating unemployment, expensive education, shrinking opportunities, and rising living costs – the sense of economic precarity deepens.

In tea shops across Srinagar on Friday evening, conversations drifted predictably toward prices. Older men recalled earlier decades when fuel was cheap and roads emptier. Younger Kashmiris spoke about salaries that no longer match modern life. Somewhere in the background, televisions continued discussing global crude markets and strategic reserves as though economics were merely numbers moving across screens.

But economics is never only numbers.

It is the schoolteacher deciding whether to use her scooter or take a shared cab. It is the truck driver calculating whether another journey is worth the risk. It is the baker increasing bread prices by two rupees and apologising to customers. It is the family postponing travel because petrol has become too expensive.

And in Kashmir, where geography magnifies every crisis, even a three-rupee increase can feel larger than arithmetic suggests.

Because sometimes the true cost of fuel is not measured at the pump.

It is measured in how far people can still afford to move forward.

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.