To be or not to be: Social Entrepreneurship in Kashmir.

“Today that land of Kashmir, under the heels of hardship and misfortune, has become weak, vulnerable and impoverished;
A land, which was once known among the wise, as Little Iran.”
-Sir M. Iqbal (Armaghan-e-Hijaz-24)

The idea of social entrepreneurship in a society as politically unstable and volatile as Kashmir is, however, new. This latent idea has been in hibernation mode for far too long, resulting in regrettable social, economical, and psychological consequences. This dormancy is a result of deep rooted ignorance and misplaced information about the career paths which trace its origins in the imperial Maharaja’s Rule of pre-independent India where people who used to work for the government were usually better off than ordinary people doing peasantry jobs. Decades of political uncertainty has further escalated the doubts on success in business, hurtling the Kashmiri youth deep into the psychological abyss where pursuing their dreams as remained, as such, a dream.

Throw in some statistics in the gloomy picture and the picture gets even darker: life expectancy, in part due to access to better medical care and in part due to casual improvement in wages, is ever increasing, and with the fertility rates unchanged, causes an unprecedented “pot belly” in the population pyramid. This accumulation of a young population further exacerbates the unemployment quagmire. According to a report by Mercy Corps, a non-government organization based in United States, the number of job seeking youth is more than the total number of employees the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) government has engaged over the last 60 years. Kashmir, as a result, has been ravaged by the scourge of unemployment. A depressed market, protracted and episodic conflict, and a disparity between the educational system and the demands of