Jammu and Kashmir’s economy should be integrated with Pakistan, China: Khurshid Ganai to Governor NN Vohra

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir’s advisor Khurshid Ganai has said that the state should be economically integrated with Pakistan, China and central Asian countries to make it a selfsufficient and vibrant economy.

Ganai, a 1982 batch IAS officer, who was recently appointed advisor to Governor NN Vohra suggested that people of J&K needed to disperse to neighboring countries and communication lines with all these countries should be opened up.

"If not political integration, there should be economic integration of J&K with Pakistan, China and central Asian countries to make the state economically vibrant and self-sufficient," said Ganai, while addressing, a twoday conference on ‘Growth and Development in Northwestern region: Issues and Perspectives’ at Kashmir University. He said this was his personal point of view.

Ganai, who retired in October last year, is currently in-charge of 12 departments including, Agriculture, Rural Development, Forest, Environment, Labour and Employment, Social Welfare and Tribal Affairs. Lamenting on the ‘obsolete nature’ of almost all major government policies, Ganai claimed that education, health, employment, agriculture and land utilisation policies have to be redesigned and re-looked at.

"Kashmir has become a nation of shopkeepers as we see shops opening up everywhere. Shops have become a menace. We should be thinking on modern lines like e-commerce for economic betterment of our progeny," said Ganai. Kashmir, Ganai said, was the heritage of the world and has to be protected by people and the government.

"Being ecologically fragile and sensitive, Kashmir cannot house big polluting industries, rather, we should concentrate on smaller self-sustaining industries," said Ganai, The Valley should be the hub of high-end and adventure tourism, rather than number driven mass-tourism.

"Lets all talk about cleaner tourism. I don’t want to see huge number of people (tourists) strewing garbage all around. It will ruin our ecosystem," said Ganai.