SRINAGAR: Member of Legislative Assembly Waheed Para has raised concerns over the implementation of the government’s YUWA entrepreneurship scheme, questioning the effectiveness of the programme and the limited role assigned to the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) in Jammu and Kashmir.
In a statement posted on social media, Para said Jammu and Kashmir has “one of the finest institutions dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurship” in the form of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), but claimed that the institution has been pushed into “near dormancy” in recent years.
J&K has one of the finest institutions dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurship the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI). Yet, over the past few years, this institution has been pushed into near dormancy. The question that naturally arises is: why has the #YUWA program not…
— Waheed Ur Rehman Para (@parawahid) March 7, 2026
He questioned why the government did not entrust the implementation of the YUWA programme to EDI, despite its track record in promoting entrepreneurship in the region.
Para said the government’s YUWA Scheme, a Rs 2,700-crore initiative, had promised to generate around 1.37 lakh entrepreneurship opportunities. However, he alleged that the programme had not resulted in the creation of genuinely new enterprises.
“Not a single genuinely new venture appears to have emerged under the scheme. Instead, existing startups seem to have been counted to inflate the numbers,” Para said.
The MLA also alleged that the programme had largely been reduced to the distribution of short-term loans rather than building a sustainable ecosystem for entrepreneurs.
He further questioned the process used to gather data for the scheme, claiming that a survey conducted for the programme was carried out as a formality by employees under the supervision of the Labour Department, raising concerns about the credibility and methodology of the data.
Para also criticised the government’s decision to appoint the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) as the nodal agency for the programme instead of EDI.
“Despite having EDI, a dedicated entrepreneurship institution with a proven track record, the government chose to appoint IIM, primarily an academic institution, as the nodal agency for the programme,” he said.
Calling for a review of the approach, Para said that if the objective was to create genuine entrepreneurs rather than “circulate loan figures”, the government should restore responsibility for startup initiatives such as YUWA to the Entrepreneurship Development Institute.
He said Jammu and Kashmir needed “genuine entrepreneurship development and not just statistics” to address the growing challenge of unemployment in the region.
