Bengaluru, Aug 1 (NVI) Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today invited businesses to establish operations in his Union Territory, saying technology had created an opportunity for talented young people to participate in national and global markets without necessarily leaving home.
Speaking at ‘IIMBue 2026’ event here, he asked, “What would you need to see before you put your second centre in a place like ours?”
He said the next transformation of J&K would depend less on government schemes than on whether institutions could inspire confidence and enable thousands of entrepreneurs to build businesses.
He said J&K’s per capita income had grown faster than several northern states over the past five years but remained about Rs 50,000 below the national average, calling for the need to create more private-sector opportunities.
“Our job is to widen access to it as far as we can,” Abdullah said, referring to enterprise.
“Whether any of this succeeds… will be decided by thousands of ordinary decisions, by entrepreneurs who start companies, investors who stay patient, universities that produce talent, young people who decide their future is worth backing.
“The productive assets of the 21st century are no longer land or physical capital. If land was the asset of that age, ours is enterprise,” Abdullah said. “Broadening access to enterprise is the modern equivalent of broadening access to land.”
He talked about J&K’s post-Independence land reforms, saying transferring ownership to cultivators fundamentally changed economic incentives and laid the foundation for improvements in education, healthcare and productivity that followed over subsequent decades.
“Institutions set the incentives. People read them before they invest, before they educate a child, before they take a risk,” he said. “Ownership encouraged investment. Security encouraged productivity.”
He said development was “rarely the consequence of one government or budget” but rather the outcome of institutions that reward ordinary effort over time.
Abdullah added that despite geographical disadvantages such as mountainous terrain, high transport costs and limited industrialisation, J&K has recorded among the highest life expectancy levels in India, arguing that institutions rather than geography explain the difference.
The Chief Minister said decades of militancy necessitated higher public spending on maintaining order.
He described it as “security economy”, where preserving stability took precedence over expansion and private risk-taking.
“Nobody chooses a security economy. It is what rational adaptation looks like when it goes on long enough,” he said. (NVI)
