Jitender Singh on Friday said that concerted and technology-based effort has been made to promote the agriculture sector for young start-ups in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in the last few years under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Singh accused the earlier governments of deliberately discouraging start-ups in Jammu and Kashmir including in the Kashmir valley, so that “the youth could remain perpetually dependent on salaried government jobs and continue hanging around the political masters of the day.”
As a result, the region’s immense potential for entrepreneurship and self-livelihood remained unexplored, he said, according to a release by the Ministry of Science & Technology.
Addressing an interactive meet of Agricultural Start-Ups and farmers, organised jointly by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology (SKUAST), the minister said, “It is for the first time in the last few years that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, concerted and technology based effort has been made to promote the agriculture sector for young start-ups in the region.”
While in the past, he said, the farmers and the agriculturists would largely depend upon the climate and vagaries of nature for cultivation, in the last few years, new areas like, for example, Lavender cultivation have been explored at a large scale both in the Kashmir valley in the areas around Gulmarg as well as in the Jammu region in districts Doda and Reasi.