Srinagar:Withthe economy of Kashmir having had a nosedive for almost three decades ourhorticulture and to some extent our tourism has kept us afloat. However, fromthe last five years tourism which had increased the revenue of the UT to someextent has also declined due to the Covid turbulence. The UT government hadtried its best to institutionalize entrepreneurship by providing subsidizedseed funds to prospective educated entrepreneurs. But, how far have thesesubsidized funds been able to build entrepreneurship in Jammu and Kashmir andmost importantly how much labor force they have been able to accommodate is themillion dollar question. Our institution dealing with entrepreneurship isnearing a decade since its inception, its primary role was to provideemployment to the one who gets t he s ubsidized l oan b ut a lso t o o thereducated men who would be employed under him in future. A look at theindicators of our economy including Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and HumanDevelopment Index (HDI) suggests that EDI and other institutes of similarnature have been an utter failure. The irony is that even in a startup friendlyenvironment like San Francisco in the USA and Oslo in Denmark the success rateof startups is just a mere 10-20 percent, and here our institutions areclaiming the success rate is more than 60 percent! And if the success rate isso high then according to the corresponding statistics the UT’s GDP should alsogo higher or for that matter the Human Development Index. The moot point isthat when in the USA, the success rate of startups is just a paltry 10-20percent then how come we have such a success rate. It is time to make themaccountable. After all, taxpayers money should not be allowed to go down thedrain.