Kishtwar

What the plan promotes

• ▸Agriculture, horticulture and tourism are the district's prominent economic activities; maize and wheat are the major food crops, with apple, pear and walnut the principal horticulture and rajmash and pomegranate the major cash crops.
• ▸Crop production, maintenance & marketing carries the single largest credit potential at 105.57 Cr, with plantation & horticulture term lending at 36.01 Cr reflecting the apple/walnut orchard base.
• ▸Dairy farming, sheep and goat rearing, poultry and silk-worm rearing (reeling) are the key allied activities; dairy alone has 30.03 Cr and sheep/goat/piggery 4.03 Cr of term-loan potential.
• ▸Tourism and religious tourism are a major employer, with visited spots including Machail Mata shrine at Paddar, Shri Ashtdashbhuja Mata, Hudh Mata, Sinthan Top and Warwanand Ziarat Shah Farid-Ud-Din.
• ▸Handicraft and handloom is a strong untapped cluster with 7 handicraft training centres and 3 handloom training centres and major markets at Kishtwar.
• ▸Medicinal and cash crops grown include solai, aeolavera, peppermint, ginge rand garlic (medicinal) and rajmash and pomegranate (cash crops).

Gaps the plan names

• ▸Poor spread of the bank branch network, with some blocks having only 1 branch while Kishtwar block has more than 10 branches.
• ▸Low spread of Business Correspondents (BCs) limiting last-mile financial access.
• ▸Lack of basic rural infrastructure facilities such as roads.
• ▸Poor irrigation facilities (only 1735 ha canal-irrigated out of a large geographical area).
• ▸Lack of off-farm skills and facilities for rural industrial entrepreneurship, requiring structured skill development of rural youth and SHG women to build a credit-worthy workforce.