Free Trade Courses and a Route to a Startup Loan: Inside Jammu's Police De-Addiction Centre

Getting clean is the part everyone talks about. What happens on the Tuesday after is the part that decides whether it holds — and that is the gap Jammu's Police De-addiction, Rehabilitation and Mental Health Care Centre says it is now trying to close.

The centre is setting up a skilling-cum-training wing offering short vocational courses to the people it treats, and is negotiating an arrangement that would connect those who stay drug-free to actual startup capital. Below: what is confirmed, what is still only proposed, and who it is open to.

What courses are on offer?

Six short-term trades, chosen for how quickly they convert into paid work in Jammu:

• Plumbing

• Electrician work

• Mobile repairing

• Basic computer courses

• Solar technician training

• AC and refrigerator repairing

Read that list again and notice what is not on it. There is no token craft course. Solar technician and AC repair are two of the faster-growing service trades in the division, and mobile repair and plumbing are the classic routes to self-employment that need a skill and a toolkit rather than a degree and a network.

What is the loan part, exactly?

This is the piece to be careful about. The centre says a Memorandum of Understanding is in the offing — being developed, not signed — with Mission YUVA and Skill India, under which patients who have stayed drug-free for roughly six months would be able to access loans to start something of their own.

Mission YUVA itself is real and already running. Its terms for a first-time entrepreneur setting up a nano enterprise are: a project cost of up to ₹10 lakh, a capital subsidy of 25% capped at ₹1 lakh — 30% for women and persons with disabilities — and an interest subvention of 5% for five years. Loans under the mission are pitched as collateral-free, which is the single most important feature for anyone with no property to pledge. Our guide to Mission YUVA covers the application route in full.

So the scheme exists and the money is defined. What does not yet exist is the signed bridge between the de-addiction centre and it. Until that MoU is executed, treat the loan route as an announced intention rather than a live entitlement.

Who is the centre actually treating?

The scale is larger than most people in the city realise. The centre runs 25 in-patient beds and a 12-hour OPD that sees around 500 people a month. It has treated 18,000 patients to date, and has digitised 10,500 patient records.

SP Headquarters Jammu Anna Sinha, who leads the facility, framed the ambition as making it "a hub for 360 degrees rehabilitation process for addicts", and put the enforcement-versus-treatment argument plainly: "Drug De-addiction is as important as catching drug peddlers." A yoga and meditation centre is also planned on the campus.

There is a student angle too

Ten interns are currently placed at the centre, drawn from the University of Jammu and Delhi University, studying psychology and criminology. For anyone doing those subjects in Jammu, a working de-addiction facility with an in-patient ward and a digitised caseload is close to the only place in the city where the coursework meets real clinical practice.

Ayushi Jasrotia, a psychology student at the University of Jammu, said the placement "improved my practical understanding of mental health and recovery". Another, Mansha Mahajan, called it "truly insightful and enriching". If you are in a psychology, social work or criminology programme locally, this is worth raising with your department directly — placements here are clearly being taken.

Where this sits in the bigger picture

J&K has been building an anti-drug architecture in public for months, and the recurring criticism of it — including in our own reporting — is that it is heavy on enforcement and campaign weeks and light on what comes after treatment. We wrote about the UT's first rehabilitation and reintegration scheme earlier this month, and about the gap the 100-day campaign's numbers do not close.

A skilling wing attached to a de-addiction ward is exactly the thing that gap describes. It is small — six courses at one centre — and half of it is still an unsigned MoU. But it is the part of the problem that usually gets a slogan rather than a workshop, and here it has got a workshop.

How to reach it

The facility operates as the Police De-addiction, Rehabilitation and Mental Health Care Centre, Jammu, with a 12-hour OPD. Anyone seeking treatment for themselves or a family member can approach the OPD directly; the skilling courses are being set up for people already in the centre's care. If you want the entrepreneurship side independently of all this, Mission YUVA runs its own application route through its portal, with facilitation centres in every district of J&K.

Sources: Greater Kashmir — Police DDRC Jammu to introduce new skilling-cum-training centre; Mission YUVA, Government of Jammu & Kashmir.