After the 2019 abrogation of a special constitutional provision called Article 370, which provided a special status to the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, the government of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi split the state into two border territories. Jammu and Kashmir became one federal or union territory bordering Pakistan, while the Ladakh region of Kashmir became the union territory bordering China.
Against this backdrop, startup policies in the border regions began emphasizing not only economic resurgence, employment generation, and entrepreneurship, but also conflict resolution and border development. In today’s scenario, in which India’s economic growth is increasingly intertwined with its strategic interests, education policy is also being discussed as a means to encourage entrepreneurship.
“In three to four years, Jammu and Kashmir will make a mark on the startup landscape of India,” he said during a panel discussion at the summit.
“Uday” (meaning “rise” in Hindi) is an “innovative program created to find and support aspiring entrepreneurs in the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh regions,” according to its website. It is jointly organized by FLO, the women’s branch of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and SCHEAM India. SCHEAM—which stands for “Sustainable Construction of Health, Education, Agriculture, and Manufacturing Sectors”—is an investment bank that backs Indian startups.
“India’s startup ecosystem [is] flourishing at an unprecedented rate, driven by the youth. This is not limited to metro cities, it has now become a social culture,” he said, while highlighting that India is the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world.
A few weeks prior, Mr. Modi had delivered the same youth-driven message at Kashmir’s iconic Bakshi Stadium. The prime minister, who is about to run for a third term in next month’s national elections, didn’t employ rhetoric about Pakistan in the neighborhood but rather spoke about development. Later, he posted a selfie with a young Kashmiri entrepreneur whose homegrown beekeeping venture has grown to a business that provides jobs for 100 youths.
Driving a Growth Story
Nikhil Gowda Kedambadi, 30, the driving force behind SCHEAM India, said that India’s growth story requires “potential investments, potential business operations, and service to clients” in four core sectors.“SCHEAM India [means] sustainable construction of health, education, and agriculture, and manufacturing sectors in India,” he told The Epoch Times.
Striving for achievements in this scenario in the border regions isn’t the same as it is in India’s urban areas. Infrastructure development in these regions is of strategic interest to India compared to urban areas, where there are neither disputed international borders nor the extremes of geography and altitude found in the border regions.
The stakes are high for India in the Himalayan border regions because the “value addition” to India’s future economy in the next quarter century will come from the wider Himalayan region as well as India’s vast coastline, according to Dr. Jitendra Singh, India’s minister of state for science and technology.
He addressed the Uday summit virtually. Among the many things that he highlighted were lavender cultivation startups in Jammu and Kashmir.
“About 4,000 people are engaged with lavender cultivation in J&K and earning lakhs of rupees. Notably, 70 percent of this youth brigade are not even graduates, but they have [an] innovative bent of mind and risk-taking capacity to move away from low-income generating maize cultivation to lavender,” Mr. Singh said.
Policymakers such as Mr. Singh and investors such as Mr. Kedambadi started to think about the region differently after the abrogation of Article 370. With this fresh perspective comes greater reflection on challenges and opportunities.
Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar, former director general of India’s Central Reserve Police Force and adviser to the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, was the chief guest at the Jan. 20 event in Jammu. Mr. Bhatnagar highlighted the establishment of “skill and technical education centers” under India’s National Policy 2020, which aims to improve vocational education quality and make students future-ready. He spoke about the border regions becoming a “part of India’s mainstream” growth story.
Mr. Bhatnagar highlighted India’s growth story as the story of India’s “aspirational generation” at the Uday Summit and called for wider participation in the evolving story.
He drew a simile with the success story of India’s Space Research Organization, India’s nodal space organization that made headlines for low-budget, high-success projects such as its moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which made a historic landing on the moon’s south pole last year.
The mission belongs to everyone, Mr. Bhatnagar said, adding that India’s work toward establishing a startup ecosystem is uncovering “unexplored wealth.”
At the first Uday Startup Program, which culminated in the summit, 1,800 ideas were generated from around Jammu and Kashmir from participants in two age categories: junior innovators and senior entrepreneurs. In the first category, Mr. Bhatnagar gave awards to the four best tech startups with roots in Jammu and Kashmir.
Among the the best in the junior innovators category was 13-year-old Arjunveer Singh, a student at Jammu’s Air Force School. Arjunveer, who started learning coding in sixth grade and is a voracious reader, was awarded for designing an app called “ReKindle HOPE,” which helps users to monitor their mental health. The eighth grader has uploaded the app to the Amazon store.
Like Arjunveer, 13-year-old junior innovator Mohammad Ayaan Sofi from Kashmir is inspired by the cultural and historical heritage of the region. He won an award for his plan to customize toys, including toys inspired by heritage. Mohammad has undergone eight surgeries to correct a vision and hearing impairment and has been mostly home-schooled because of his condition. With a keen desire for knowledge, Mohammad wants to be an astrophysicist, while his parents hope that a few remaining surgeries will help him to lead life to his fullest intellectual potential.
Anissa Nabi is a project manager for Jammu and Kashmir’s Rural Livelihood Mission and a member of the advisory board of the Uday Startup Program. She told The Epoch Times that at least a few of the startup ideas encouraged at the forum will become successful businesses and stir the region’s economy.
Startups are also widely encouraged in areas of border tourism, village tourism, discovering heritage arts, and homestays, Ms. Nabi said.
“We are creating symbols of peace, in my opinion, by progressing startups in border areas,” she said.
The Cooperative Revolution
The government in the region is also promoting startups among farmer producer organizations (FPOs), which are predominantly cooperatives at the rural level. More than 100 FPO startups have sprung up in Jammu and Kashmir in the past year, according to Vikrant Dogra, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Dairy Cooperative Federation Limited.At the time that Article 370 was abrogated, the erstwhile state, which included Ladakh, was the least cooperatively developed state in India. Since then, there has been a nascent attempt to create a supply chain constructed by FPOs—from a micro to a macro level within the state—which will then be connected with other states to create what Mr. Dogra termed a “multi-state ecosystem.”
“We have created 2,000 cooperatives. Each cooperative has a chairman and [a five-person] board of directors. So we have created [a] 10,000-strong leadership,” he told The Epoch Times.
“[The] cooperative is basically a small laboratory of a democratic setup because they elect, they have their internal voting system. Their board and chairman [are] elected. So it is democracy at a very grassroot level.”
Mr. Dogra gave the example of a tourism cooperative called Sarhad Tourism Cooperative Ltd. in the Uri border area of Baramulla, in Kashmir. Sarhad means “border” in Urdu. The cooperative was recently set up in line with the freshly designed concept of border tourism for people from around India who want to experience life on the India–Pakistan border.
Such cooperatives will help with the socio-economic empowerment of youth and provide them with an opportunity to understand democracy, Mr. Dogra said, adding that he aims to link at least one person from every poor family in the state with a local cooperative.
Mr. Kedambadi describes this massive and ambitious endeavor as an attempt not just to foster investment but to ensure “business prosperity.” He said he aims to invest in traditional startups rather than focusing on information technology alone.
“The inherent value in traditional business investment lies not only in its profitability but also in the equitable business environment it creates. When retailers flourish, they are better equipped to offer quality products,” he said.
For a region that has seen at least four wars with Pakistan and many decades of cross-border terrorism, these lofty policies create hope and assurances, because they appear to be doable. However, with youth from far-flung regions hoping to enter the world of trade and opportunities, Mr. Kedambadi’s vision of “business prosperity” will call for many years of resilient work and focused adherence to his vision.
