Srinagar, Aug. 25 -- Jammu and Kashmir sits on one of the richest hydropower reserves in India: an estimated 18,000 megawatts of gross potential, with 14,867 megawatts formally identified for development.

Only 3,540.15 megawatts have actually been commissioned. That leaves 76.19 percent of the identified potential untouched, a gap large enough to explain most of what ails the region's power economy.

This is the number that should anchor the whole debate about Kashmir's finances. Politicians routinely discuss subsidies, tariff hikes and central grants, but those arguments skip past the underlying problem: the region has built out barely a quarter of the hydropower it already knows it can generate.

Ownership compounds the shortfall. Of t...