Jammu and Kashmir is again standing at the threshold of an industrial promise. The New Central Sector Scheme of 2021, with an outlay of Rs 28,400 crore, was presented as the beginning of a new era of investment, employment and manufacturing. Five years later, the J&K Government is preparing a new industrial policy which is expected to address a question the central scheme largely left behind: what happens to thousands of existing enterprises carrying the legacy stress of more than three exceptionally difficult decades?

The forthcoming policy reportedly acknowledges this accumulated distress and envisages revival, rehabilitation and capacity-building support capable of reaching more than 20,000 existing industrial units. Alongside it, the J&K Startup Policy 2024-27 aims to nurture 2,000 startups, backed by incubation, seed support and a proposed Rs 250-crore venture fund. Other entrepreneurship and self-employment programmes are also encouraging a new generation to enter business. Together, these initiatives can create a continuum from startup to established enterprise and from stressed unit to renewed production.

But fiscal incentives and rehabilitation orders cannot restart factories by themselves. Revived units will require working capital, modernisation finance, enhanced limits and long-term credit; startups will require patient finance suited to their early stage. This creates both an opportunity and a historic responsibility for J&K Bank.No financial institution is better placed to become the banking partner of this renewal. Incorporated in 1938, J&K Bank’s defining period began after 1989, when turmoil disrupted commerce and many other banks reduced their exposure or became largely inactive in the Valley. J&K Bank continued to serve its customers.

People responded by shifting their savings and confidence towards it. The deposit windfall of the 1990s gave the Bank near-monopoly status across much of J&K for almost three decades. It was a compact forged in adversity: the Bank supported the economy, while local households and businesses provided the loyal deposit base upon which it expanded.That historic bond now faces a changed banking market. Public and private banks are approaching established J&K Bank customers with lower rates, loan takeovers, concessions, quicker decisions and customised service. In my Greater Kashmir article of 14........

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