Multiple times a day, people in Kashmir gather at mosques and other faith centres. They come to pray, but these places also bring neighbours together. People discuss families, prices, roads, schools, illness and the problems facing their neighbourhoods. The discussion is often about this world as much as the next.
One issue now needs far greater attention: what type of future will Kashmir’s young people inherit?
Unemployment has become one of the hardest economic problems facing families. Parents worry about children spending years preparing for government examinations, only to face limited openings and long recruitment processes. Young people with degrees often find a private sector too small to absorb their ambitions.
Government has an important role here, but the government cannot build the entire economy by itself. Kashmir’s communities need to ask what they can do with the resources, trust and local networks already within their reach.
Mosques and community organisations could become starting points for such an effort. A neighbourhood, for example, could pool modest contributions to establish a small food-processing unit, workshop, packaging centre, repair business, cold-storage facility or digital service company. Several families investing manageable sums could create an enterprise that serves the local area while employing young people from it.
The idea does not need communities to become corporations. It simply asks them to become economic participants.
A small unit will not solve Kashmir’s employment crisis. But thousands of such initiatives could begin filling one of the biggest holes in the region’s economy: a strong private sector rooted in local communities.
The same principle can apply to public spaces and basic services. If a lane needs repair, a playground needs maintenance or a community facility needs improvement, residents do not have to assume that nothing can happen until a government department arrives. Communities can identify the problem, contribute where they can and work with the administration to complete the job.
That does not reduce the government’s responsibility. It can make government action easier and faster. Where citizens organise themselves around a clear need, officials have a partner rather than another unresolved demand.
Kashmir already possesses something many places spend years trying to build: dense social connections. The challenge is to direct some of that collective strength toward economic and civic problems.
The future of a child in a Kashmiri neighbourhood cannot rest entirely on a government vacancy. A community that can come together to help a family in distress can also come together to create a small enterprise. A mosque that brings people together for prayer can also become a place where neighbours discuss how to create work for their children.
Kashmir does not have to wait for someone else to begin. It can begin with what it already has, and build from there.
