The real success of UMEED, NRLM, JKEDI, PMEGP, and Mission Youth will be visible when the word ‘beneficiary’ gradually gives way to ‘entrepreneur.’ Jammu and Kashmir does not lack talent. Its villages are rich in agricultural knowledge, traditional crafts, and human skill. What many need is the first opening: access to finance, proper training, market guidance, and someone to show them that a small beginning can grow. That is the journey from UMEED to entrepreneurship, and from dependence to economic independence.
Rakshanda Gul
For years, a government job has remained one of the strongest career aspirations in Jammu and Kashmir. In many families, young people complete degrees and then spend years preparing for recruitment examinations, often waiting for a limited number of vacancies. In rural areas, the situation of women has been different but equally challenging. Many possess skills in embroidery, food processing, dairy farming, tailoring and handicrafts, yet these skills often remain within the walls of their homes.
That picture is slowly changing.
Across Jammu and Kashmir, women are forming Self-Help Groups, young graduates are opening enterprises, and small business owners are moving from survival to expansion. Schemes such as UMEED under the Jammu and Kashmir Rural Livelihoods Mission, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, support through the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute, the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme and Mission Youth are contributing to this shift.
The important change is not merely that people are receiving loans. It is that, in many cases, they are beginning to see themselves as entrepreneurs.
UMEED: When Rural Women Step into the Market
The impact of UMEED is perhaps most visible in the villages of Jammu and Kashmir. Through Self-Help Groups, women who once had little or no independent income are being connected with savings, credit and livelihood activities.
The story of Hameeda Bano from Lar in Ganderbal is one such example. A member of the Mashallah Self Help Group, she entered the UMEED initiative in 2019. According to the government’s Lakhpati Didi platform, Hameeda moved into dairy farming and milk processing and established her product under the name “ASLI DAHI”. Her monthly earnings later reached around Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000.
Her story is important because dairy farming itself is not new to Kashmir. Rural women have always fed cattle, collected fodder, cleaned cowsheds and processed milk at home. What changes through entrepreneurship is the economic identity of that labour. Milk is no longer only consumed by the family or sold informally. It can be processed, branded and marketed.
In Baramulla, Mehbooba Begum of Frashthar village offers another example. After joining the ANAS Self Help Group, she received financial support through a bank loan linked with the rural livelihoods mission and established a bakery business. The enterprise helped her meet household expenses, support the education of her children and provide employment to others.
These are not simply stories of women “helping” their families. They show women becoming earners, borrowers, business owners and employers.
NRLM: Building Strength Through Groups
The National Rural Livelihoods Mission model is based on a simple but practical idea: rural poverty cannot be addressed by giving one-time assistance alone. People need institutions, access to finance, skills and continued support.
Self-Help Groups have therefore become an important economic space for rural women. A woman who may hesitate to visit a bank or government office alone often finds confidence when working with a group of women from her own village.
The group becomes a place for saving small amounts, discussing livelihood ideas and understanding credit. More importantly, women learn from one another.
In Kashmir, this collective model fits naturally with many local activities. A group of women can work in dairy processing, mushroom cultivation, tailoring, pickle making, traditional food products, handicrafts or small retail ventures. In Jammu’s rural and hilly districts, similar groups can develop enterprises around agriculture, livestock and locally available resources.
The success of the model should not be measured only by the number of Self-Help Groups created. The real question is how many women move from group membership to sustainable income.
That is where market access becomes essential.
A woman can make excellent pickles in Kupwara or embroidered products in Budgam, but if she cannot find buyers beyond her immediate neighbourhood, her enterprise will remain small. The next stage of rural entrepreneurship must therefore focus on packaging, branding, digital marketing and stronger links with markets.
JKEDI: Changing the Mindset from Job Seeker to Entrepreneur
The Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute has played an important role in promoting entrepreneurship as a career option. Established in 1997, JKEDI provides guidance, training, business planning support, financial and market linkages, mentorship and handholding for aspiring entrepreneurs.
This support is particularly relevant in Jammu and Kashmir, where the government sector cannot absorb every educated young person.
The journey of Umar Mukhtar Sofi provides an example of this transition. He established M/S New Kashmir Embroideries in 2013 with support from JKEDI. His enterprise developed around Kashmir’s traditional embroidery sector and was reported as a case of a young entrepreneur moving from seeking employment to creating livelihood opportunities for artisans.
Another example is Tahir Bashir Baba, whose entrepreneurial journey took him into spice manufacturing. With entrepreneurship training and financial support linked to JKEDI, he developed a unit processing spices such as turmeric, chilli, coriander and fennel.
Such enterprises carry a larger lesson for Jammu and Kashmir. The region produces agricultural and traditional products, but value addition often remains limited. Apples, milk, spices and other raw products have greater economic potential when local entrepreneurs process, package and market them.
Entrepreneurship, therefore, is not only about opening another shop. It can also mean building local industries around resources already available in the region.
PMEGP: Giving Small Enterprises a Financial Beginning
For many aspiring entrepreneurs, the biggest obstacle is capital. A person may have a business idea and practical skills but lack the money required to purchase machinery, rent a workspace or buy initial raw material.
The Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme has become one route for supporting micro-enterprises.
The experiences of women in Kashmir’s handicraft sector show how access to enterprise support can turn traditional skills into income. One reported case is that of Asifa, a young woman involved in designing embroidered shawls in Baramulla. Her enterprise expanded into a network of women who stitched and designed shawls for wider markets, allowing several women to earn from their skills.
This type of entrepreneurship has a multiplier effect.
When one woman establishes a successful unit, she may purchase work from ten other women. Those ten women earn from their homes and contribute to household expenses. The economic impact moves beyond the original beneficiary.
PMEGP-supported enterprises can be particularly significant in food processing, handicrafts, small manufacturing, repair services and rural industries. But financial assistance alone cannot guarantee success. Beneficiaries also need realistic business plans, knowledge of markets and post-establishment guidance.
A loan can open the door. It cannot run the business.
Mission Youth: Giving Young People an Alternative Path
Jammu and Kashmir has a large young population with changing aspirations. Today’s youth are more connected to technology, social media and markets outside the region. Yet many still struggle to find stable employment.
Mission Youth has attempted to address this challenge through livelihood generation, skill development and entrepreneurship-focused initiatives. Programmes such as Tejaswini have specifically targeted young women seeking to establish self-employment ventures. Under the notified framework, eligible young women were facilitated for financial assistance of up to Rs 5 lakh under Mudra-linked financing, along with subsidy support linked to project cost.
In Doda, for example, 95 women aspirants completed entrepreneurship training under the Tejaswini initiative. They were trained for ventures in retail, boutiques, salons, poultry, sheep farming, dairy and other activities.
The importance of such programmes lies in exposure as much as finance.
A young woman from a remote village may have the ability to run a boutique, food unit or digital business. Still, she may not know how to prepare a project report, approach a bank or calculate business costs. Entrepreneurship training can help bridge that gap.
For young men and women, the message must be clear: employment does not always have to arrive in the form of an appointment letter.
Sometimes it begins with a small unit, a machine, a laptop, a dairy farm or even a room converted into a workspace.
Economic Independence Is Also Social Change
When a woman begins earning, the change is rarely limited to her bank account.
She may contribute to her children’s education, household expenses or healthcare. She may gain a stronger voice in family decisions. A young entrepreneur who creates a successful business may employ two or three people from the same locality.
This is how entrepreneurship gradually changes society.
In villages across Jammu and Kashmir, women who were once introduced only as someone’s daughter, wife or mother are increasingly being recognised by the work they do. Some run bakeries. Others manage dairy units, tailoring centres, handicraft businesses and small shops.
The road, however, is not without difficulties. Complicated paperwork, delays in financial linkage, lack of awareness, weak marketing and limited business mentoring continue to discourage many aspiring entrepreneurs. Rural women may also face mobility restrictions and social hesitation.
Government departments must therefore move beyond sanctioning schemes. Successful beneficiaries need continued handholding, market connections and digital training. Local success stories should also be taken to colleges, universities and villages so that young people can see entrepreneurship through familiar faces rather than only through official advertisements.
From Beneficiary to Employer
The real success of UMEED, NRLM, JKEDI, PMEGP and Mission Youth will be visible when the word “beneficiary” gradually gives way to “entrepreneur”.
Hameeda Bano’s dairy enterprise in Ganderbal and Mehbooba Begum’s bakery in Baramulla show what can happen when local skills meet financial opportunity. The journeys of entrepreneurs supported through JKEDI demonstrate that young people can create enterprises around traditional and modern sectors.
Jammu and Kashmir does not lack talent. Its villages are rich in agricultural knowledge, traditional crafts and human skill. Its youth are educated, digitally connected and increasingly willing to experiment.
What many need is the first opening: access to finance, proper training, market guidance and someone to show them that a small beginning can grow.
A scheme on paper does not create economic independence. It is created when a woman sells the first product carrying her own brand, when a young graduate hires the first employee in his enterprise, and when a family begins to see business ownership as respectable as seeking a salaried job.
That is the journey from UMEED to entrepreneurship, and from dependence to economic independence.
The writer is a social commentator with a Master’s in Food Science and Technology and a BEd. She writes on themes related to women’s empowerment, rural livelihoods, entrepreneurship, health, and changing social realities in the Kashmir Valley.
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