5 months ago
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The communicative truthful far:
“If paradise is to beryllium recovered connected earth, Kashmir is it.” Yet today, Kashmir’s paradise is fraying — and successful Srinagar, we find the fault-lines of a determination system astatine a crossroads: betwixt quality and breakdown; betwixt accepted livelihoods and externally imposed maturation models. Srinagar is facing mounting ecological stress, weakening accepted sectors, and the after-effects of governance disruptions since the dilution of Article 370. Wetland loss, supply-chain breakdowns, municipality sprawl, and joblessness person intensified economical fragility.
Why is Srinagar ecologically fragile?
Srinagar, nestled successful a Himalayan valley, carries heavy ecological vulnerabilities. Wetlands, lakes, and mountains person kept the metropolis live — arsenic a horticultural belt, tourer beacon, and artisan hub. But unchecked municipality expansion, sprawl, flood risk, and infrastructure accent are present compromising that fragile base. A section study notes that formerly earthy sponges person been overtaken by construction; “encroached wetlands and choked drains… amplify flood damage, portion unchecked sprawl hikes surviving costs.”
Meanwhile, the horticulture assemblage — erstwhile a pillar of Kashmir’s rural-urban interface — has been hammered. One survey points retired that contempt the abrogation of peculiar status, the yearly maturation complaint slumped, proviso chains broke down, and the backbone of thousands of livelihoods cracked.
What changed aft the dilution of Article 370?
Since the dilution of Article 370 successful August 2019, the portion has experienced a melodramatic governance shift. The dissolution of the Statehood status, connection blackouts and prolonged curfews person disrupted not lone mundane beingness but besides economical institutions. For instance, a qualitative survey of women entrepreneurs successful Srinagar and Ganderbal shows however the connection blackout, web restrictions and lockdowns crushed their quality to marketplace crafts, link with customers, and prolong a business.
In Srinagar, the backstage assemblage has remained stunted, portion implicit 32,000 authorities posts stay unfilled arsenic of March 2025. Urban unemployment stands astatine 11.8%, younker unemployment astatine 32%, and women’s unemployment astatine 53.6%.
Then came the illness of the 3 pillars: tourism, horticulture, and artisan trades.
Tourism is projected arsenic the motor of revival, yet it remains highly seasonal and vulnerable.
A caller nonfiction reports that successful 2025 alone, landslides and road closures stranded 800+ effect trucks, resulting successful implicit ₹200 crore losses successful a fewer days — demonstrating the fragility of the full section proviso chain.
Supply disruptions, clime risk, mediocre marketplace access, and argumentation neglect person reduced horticulture’s stock successful GDP and hampered its relation arsenic a unchangeable driver.
Artisan trades are likewise suffering. A qualitative survey recovered that women artisans successful the handicraft manufacture look exploitation, deficiency of entree to markets, scarcity of earthy materials, and breakdown successful proviso chains. Many thoroughfare vendors and women workers successful informal markets gain arsenic small arsenic ₹250–300 a day.
Economic disruptions person pushed definite marginalised and transgender communities into enactment work, arsenic different income sources disappear.
Why does the metropolitan superior infusion exemplary autumn short?
Many maturation plans for Srinagar dainty it arsenic a recipient of ample superior flows — existent estate, tourism mega-projects, municipality infrastructure — connected the presumption that spending automatically leads to upliftment. But erstwhile section governance is weak, accepted livelihoods are ignored, and the ecological basal is compromised, this exemplary fails.
In Srinagar’s “smart city” push, for example, artisan spaces and vendors are often squeezed retired portion the facade beautifies; greenish spaces vanish, older trees are removed; livelihoods are disrupted.
Hence, unless maturation anchors itself successful the section economy, the “integration into a metropolitan capital” attack risks expanding fragility alternatively than alleviating it.
What are the plausible directions for sustainable growth?
Horticulture requires reliable cold-chain infrastructure, climate-adapted crops, and husbandman cooperatives. Wetlands, floodplains, and water systems indispensable beryllium protected and integrated into municipality planning. Instead of sprawl, we should put successful greenish infrastructure.
Tourism tin turn done community-led, heritage-based, and ecologically delicate models that spot artisans and section hosts astatine the centre.
Srinagar’s artisan and craft-based system needs organization enactment that values its taste depth. Traditional clusters of weavers, shawl-makers, wood-craft workers, papier-mâché artists and brassware makers necessitate plan assistance, accessible integer selling channels and systems that trim dependence connected exploitative intermediaries. The State indispensable besides facilitate micro-finance, raw-material common-pools, craft-export linkages, and extortion of store spaces alternatively than treating artisan neighbourhoods arsenic “peripheral” to modern development.
Urban readying should integrate artisan quarters, sphere workshops, not criminalise thoroughfare vendors oregon unit them into oblivion. What Srinagar needs is simply a managed modulation alternatively than displacing them.
Restoring meaningful section governance is indispensable for immoderate sustainable economical revival. Without a section voice, top-down superior flows volition lone deepen alienation.
State argumentation should guarantee reliable connectivity, functional selling platforms, accomplishment upgrades, and helplines for women entrepreneurs.
The maturation slump and joblessness person pushed susceptible groups into the margins. A coordinated societal protection, vocational grooming and livelihood diversification strategy is needed.
Most importantly, Srinagar’s aboriginal depends connected gathering a balanced economical basal alternatively than relying connected tourism oregon existent property alone.
Horticulture, artisanship, small-scale manufacturing, niche tourism and services indispensable turn unneurotic to trim vulnerability. For example, horticulture unsocial engages much than 3 cardinal radical successful the region, and ignoring it weakens the full economical foundation.
Tourism, meanwhile, should beryllium made resilient to predominant disruptions done stronger links with section crafts, integer outreach, homestays, and off-season offerings.
Urban occupation instauration should absorption not conscionable connected high-capital projects but connected upgrading the informal system and creating linkages with village-town interactions.
What does each this mean for Srinagar’s future?
Srinagar is astatine an inflection point. It strains nether the value of ecological, economical and governance vulnerabilities. To reconstruct its promise, maturation cannot simply mean “capital inflow and astute metropolis facade”. It calls for reviving the soils, the workshops, the crafts homes of Srinagar, listening to its women entrepreneurs, artisans, and tiny farmers; empowering them done connectivity, governance, marketplace access, and ecological protection.
In doing so, we displacement from fragility to resilience — from a “metropolitan cash-influx” exemplary to a locally rooted, sustainably scaled economy.
The question for policymakers, for civilian society, for the section system is: Will we locomotion that way — oregon volition Srinagar’s paradise gaffe done our fingers?
Tikender Singh Panwar is simply a erstwhile Deputy Mayor of Shimla and presently a subordinate of the Kerala Urban Commission
