At a time when the government led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has taken the prudent step of revisiting and reshaping the industrial policy through stakeholder consultation, insights on Ease of Doing Business assume greater relevance. The issues raised across the Greater Kashmir’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ series can serve as a practical guide for the policy drafting process, ensuring that the new framework supports consolidation of the existing industrial base alongside expansion through new investments.
Across the 24 parts, a consistent pattern was evident: the policies framed with promise, but weakened by design gaps, delayed by indecision, and diluted in execution. What was envisioned as facilitation has, in practice, translated into friction.
This entire discourse has revolved around the MSME sector, small in scale but critical in impact. These enterprises are engines of employment and anchors of local economies. Running an MSME in Jammu and Kashmir is akin to managing a system within a system – balancing production, finance, labour, compliance, and market risks. To burden such enterprises with procedural delays and repetitive compliances is not regulation, it is obstruction.
A key lesson from this series is that digitisation alone does not create ease. Portals and online systems may project reform, but unless they ensure time-bound approvals, reduced interface, and predictable outcomes, they remain superficial. Ease is measured on the ground by time, clarity, and certainty.
Equally concerning is the growing centralisation of decision-making. Powers once exercised at the level of District Industries Centres, closer to the entrepreneur, are increasingly being drawn upwards. The recent directive requiring approval at the ministerial level even for routine changes in line of activity exemplifies this shift. It signals a return to process-heavy governance, where enterprise is slowed by hierarchy.
This runs counter to the national emphasis on trust-based systems, self-certification, and decentralisation. Instead of simplifying, the framework risks reintroducing layers of control at a time when agility is essential.
The earlier episodes have documented this drift across multiple fronts, weakening of institutions like SIDCO and SICOP; policy inconsistencies in JKIDC; exclusion of stakeholders in decision making; lack of convergence with central schemes; lack of inter and intra departmental coordination; flawed land allotment practices; entangled in legacy debt; and sectoral distress in industries such as agro-forestry based, stone crushing and poultry. These are not isolated failures, but interconnected symptoms of systemic misalignment.
Another recurring concern has been the absence of accountability. Policies have been announced and committees constituted, but without timelines or ownership of outcomes. The result is a widening gap between intent and impact where ease becomes a narrative rather than a lived reality.
It bears reiteration that this ‘Ease of Doing Business’ series of Greater Kashmir has not been an exercise in criticism, but in constructive engagement. Its objective has been to bring field-level realities into policy discourse at a crucial moment of policy transition.
As the new industrial policy takes shape, the lessons are clear. Without decentralisation, time-bound clearances, accountability, and stakeholder participation, no policy can deliver meaningful ease. Facilitation must replace control.
At its core, Ease of Doing Business means enabling entrepreneurs to take legitimate decisions without unnecessary approvals. Routine changes, whether in structure or activity, should be governed by simple, transparent systems, not prolonged processes. Regulation, where necessary, must be localised, responsive, and predictable.
The government now stands at a decisive point. Its policy choices will determine whether Jammu and Kashmir moves towards a truly facilitative industrial ecosystem or continues to operate within cycles of delay and control.
The experience of recent years offers a simple lesson: the challenge has never been the absence of policy, it has been the absence of trust, continuity, and execution.
‘Ease of Doing Business’ cannot remain a slogan. It must become a lived experience.
With this, the Greater Kashmir series on ‘Ease of Doing Business’ comes full circle, not as an end, but as a reflection on the ground realities faced by enterprises despite repeated claims of reforms. The purpose of this series has been to highlight the disconnect between policy intent and operational experience where “ease” often exists in documentation, not in practice.
