SIDCO, SICOP unfinished experiments of JKIDC

Srinagar, Apr 8In its effort to advance industrialisation in Jammu and Kashmir, the government had, over time, created two vital institutional pillars – the Jammu and Kashmir State Industrial Development Corporation (SIDCO) and the Jammu and Kashmir Small Scale Industries : Development Corporation (SICOP).

These were not mere administrative bodies but were carefully designed instruments of industrial policy, each with a defined and complementary role in nurturing enterprise across scales.

SIDCO, established in 1969, focused on medium and large industries through the development of Industrial Growth Centres, industrial estates, and provision of core infrastructure, while also extending developmental financial support through refinance arrangements with institutions such as the Industrial Development Bank of India.

SICOP, established in 1975, anchored the promotion of MSMEs by providing marketing support, procurement linkages, and managing a network of industrial estates tailored for small units.

Together, these two institutions formed the backbone of industrial growth in the region. They nurtured first-generation entrepreneurs, enabled local manufacturing, and supported the rise of several enterprises that continue to sustain the industrial landscape today. Notably, both corporations operated for decades on their own resource generation, without dependence on the State exchequer, an achievement few public sector undertakings can claim.

However, the turning point came not from external pressures, but from within the system itself.

In 2021, the Industries and Commerce Department took a policy decision to create a new entity – the Jammu and Kashmir Industrial Development Corporation (JKIDC) – with the stated objective of merging SIDCO and SICOP into a single, unified structure aimed at improving efficiency and ease of doing business.

This decision, entirely driven by the Department, marked the beginning of an uncertain and deeply disruptive phase.

The trajectory since then reflects a pattern of decision without delivery.

Following the Administrative Council’s approval, a committee was constituted vide Government Order No 877-JK(GAD) of 2021 to prepare a roadmap.

This was followed by two more committees under government orders dated January 6, 2023, and May 24, 2023, to work out modalities for incorporation.

Yet, despite this chain of committees, there has been no tangible outcome.

Yet, nearly five years later, despite this multiplicity of committees and prolonged administrative exercise, there is no tangible progress on ground.

The proposal remains trapped in files, reportedly caught between differing bureaucratic positions – some terming the merger too complex to implement, while others suggesting an alternative structure with equity participation of existing corporations.

In the meantime, the consequences for SIDCO and SICOP have been severe.

With their roles diluted and their future left uncertain, both organisations have been pushed into a state of institutional fatigue. Once self-sustaining entities, they now struggle to generate even operational resources, at times depending on government support for meeting basic liabilities such as staff salaries.

This decline is not incidental, it is the direct outcome of a policy decision left unattended.

Stakeholders across the industrial spectrum have consistently voiced a clear and reasoned position: these institutions should have been allowed to continue in their established roles.

Their functional relevance, ground-level accessibility, and institutional experience remain unmatched.

Instead of strengthening them, they have been rendered directionless.

The policy contradiction becomes even more glaring in the manner in which new industrial development is being executed.

Historically, the development of industrial estates and growth centres was undertaken by SIDCO and SICOP themselves, allowing them not only to fulfil their mandate but also to generate resources through such activities.

Today, these very functions are increasingly being outsourced to external agencies such as IRCON, CPWD, and others.

This shift has effectively deprived SIDCO and SICOP of their core functional domain and revenue streams, while transferring these opportunities to outside agencies with no institutional linkage to the local industrial ecosystem.

If the intent was to create a new institutional framework under JKIDC, nothing prevented the coexistence of all three entities during a structured transition.

Instead, what has unfolded is a premature weakening of the old without the readiness of the new – a vacuum created by policy without execution.

The Industries and Commerce Department, having initiated this process, bears direct responsibility for its current state. Its failure is not merely in decision-making, but in the absence of follow-through.

A structural overhaul of such magnitude cannot be left unattended for years without consequences.

Yet, that is precisely what has happened.

Ease of Doing Business cannot be built on institutional uncertainty.

It cannot coexist with a system where functional organisations are dismantled in anticipation of reform, only for that reform to remain indefinitely unrealised.

What J&K is witnessing today is not administrative streamlining, but institutional erosion where two time-tested pillars of industrial support have been weakened, and the promised alternative remains largely notional.

In this backdrop, the claim of Ease of Doing Business stands fundamentally compromised not by intent, but by the failure of its implementation, and more so by the inertia of the very Department entrusted with carrying it forward.