Srinagar, May 12 -- Government conferences in Kashmir now speak the language of innovation with remarkable enthusiasm.

Startup festivals fill hotel halls in Srinagar. Officials celebrate incubation centres, investment summits, and entrepreneurship drives with polished presentations and ambitious slogans. Social media pages showcase smiling founders beside banners carrying words like disruption and innovation. A modern economy appears close at hand.

Reality tells a different story.

Most young entrepreneurs in Kashmir spend less time building companies and more time wrestling with weak infrastructure, shrinking markets, expensive logistics, and thin financial support. Public discourse celebrates startups as symbols of progress, while the...