No society prospers on govt jobs alone: Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said no society had ever become prosperous solely through government employment or public expenditure, stressing that enterprise is what converts opportunity into prosperity.

Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the IIM Bangalore Alumni Association here, Abdullah said Jammu and Kashmir’s experience showed that societies changed course when institutions altered the incentives that shaped ordinary people’s decisions over time.

He said Jammu and Kashmir was often discussed through the language of politics, security and geography, but those dimensions obscured another equally important story-one of human development and resilience despite structural constraints.

“If you were shown only the physical geography of Jammu and Kashmir, you would predict an economy constrained by mountains, high transport costs, dispersed settlements, difficult logistics and limited industrialisation,” he said, while noting that life expectancy in Jammu and Kashmir remained among the highest in the country despite those limitations.

“The answer I came to believe lay less in any single programme than in institutions. They shaped the incentives that guided people’s decisions. Development is rarely the consequence of one government or one budget. It is the slow work of institutions that determines whether ordinary effort is rewarded,” Abdullah said.

He said the defining productive asset of the 21st century was no longer land but enterprise supported by knowledge, technology, energy and connectivity.

“Broadening access to enterprise is the modern equivalent of broadening access to land,” he said, adding that the government’s Mission Yuva initiative sought to identify aspiring entrepreneurs and connect them with finance, markets and mentorship.

Abdullah said digital connectivity alone would not automatically reduce regional disparities, as technology had so far concentrated opportunities instead of dispersing them.

He said Jammu and Kashmir should build on its strengths in horticulture, handicrafts, tourism and hydropower through better logistics, branding and digital commerce to create greater value rather than simply increase volume.

Asked which sectors held the greatest untapped potential in Jammu and Kashmir, he said agriculture and allied activities offered the biggest opportunities.

He said dairy processing, post-harvest management, diversification beyond apples and the cultivation of crops such as blueberries offered significant growth opportunities.