Srinagar, June 24 -- Jammu & Kashmir has a story it loves to tell about itself: breathtaking landscapes, world-class saffron, apple orchards that supply half the country, and a tourism surge that brought 2.11 crore visitors in 2023 alone - a record.

By almost any headline measure, the Union Territory is moving forward. The problem is that moving forward and catching up are two entirely different things, and government data makes the distance between the two painfully precise.

Compare J&K's per capita income of Rs.1,46,447 in 2023-24 with Himachal Pradesh's Rs.2,35,199 for the same year.

That single number, a gap of nearly Rs.89,000 per person, per year, represents the difference between rhetoric and reality.

Uttarakhand sits even high...