By Yasir Altaf Zargar

A generation of Kashmiri twenty-somethings has stopped waiting for a government stamp to define its future. 

Walk the fruit market in Sopore or a handicraft workshop in Budgam and you will meet founders selling honey and Pashmina shawls through WhatsApp catalogues, running D2C labels that ship into Delhi and Mumbai, or building agri-tech ventures off a single smartphone. 

Jammu and Kashmir now counts close to 1,400 registered start-ups, and the administration wants that number doubled, then doubled again, within a couple of years. 

The change has already begun, while much of the coverage still tells Kashmir’s story through strife and job stress.

The old script was simple and unforgiving. A government job was the prize, and failing that, a private job outside the Union Territory. Reaching either meant years of preparation with no guarantee of a result. Backdoor appointments could also favour those with a relative inside a department over someone who had simply studied harder.

Kashmiris have always had the will to work. What they needed was a path where taking a chance on themselves could lead to opportunity.

Three things broke that pattern loose. 

Cheap data and the smartphone gave........

© Kashmir Observer