In the early days of spring, before the first buds of almond trees began to bloom, our village would come alive with the sounds of anticipation. It was the time of Gongul, a cherished tradition that marked the beginning of the farming season in Kashmir. The sharing of walnuts, a symbol of prosperity, and the sweetened rice, a token of sweetness in life, were blessings bestowed upon the next generation. It was a moment when the community came together, bound by a shared purpose and a collective memory of the seasons that shaped their lives.
The rhythmic clatter of wooden ploughs. My father, along with other farmers, would lead their bulls to the fields, guiding them with steady hands and seasoned eyes. As they broke the ground, elders would gather the children, distributing walnuts and rice mixed with sugar, a simple yet profound gesture that connected us to the land and to each other. The essence of Gongul is beautifully captured in the words of Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, the revered Sufi saint known as Nundreshi:
"Yus kari gongul, sui kari kraw"
(He who sows, shall be the one to harvest too.)
In another verse, Sheikh Noorani reflects on the transformation of tools of war into instruments of cultivation:
"Kartal phetrem ta gearimas Dreati"
(I broke the sword and molded sickles out of it.)
The sword turned sickle was not just a metaphor for peace, but a call to dignity through cultivation, a reminder that creation, not destruction, anchors societies. Today, that dignity is under siege.
At The Crossroads Of Soil And Struggle
"The authorities, without respecting even their own laws, denied us fair compensation," says one farmer from Budgam, his voice steady but his eyes hollow with exhaustion.
"What we received were mere peanuts. Left with no land, we tried to resist, but when we objected to vacating, three boys from our village were detained by the local police. All we were asking for was fair compensation under the law. Now we are left to wonder: what will we do, and where will we go?"
His question echoes across Kashmir's villages, orchards, and highland meadows. It is the question that has replaced Gongul's seasonal invocation: Kus kari Gongul? Who will sow? No longer just a ritual call to the fields, it has become a question about the future of Kashmir itself.
Historically, Kashmir's farming communities endured the burdens of beggar (forced labour under feudal systems) where peasants were compelled to work without compensation. The transition from this oppressive structure to something more equitable was marked by landmark land reforms.
The Land to Tiller Act abolished the feudal system, granting ownership rights to actual cultivators. These reforms were not merely legal changes. They also represented a reclaiming of dignity, aligning with the spiritual ethos of Sheikh Noorani's teachings.
These protections had a constitutional backbone. Before August 2019, land in Jammu and Kashmir was governed by a slew of local statutes, including the J&K Alienation of Land Act (1938), the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act (1950), and the J&K Land Grants Act (1960), which together ensured that only state subjects (permanent residents) could own land, barring outside purchase or lease. Articles 35A and 370 shielded local populations from external land pressures and large-scale demographic change, forming the legal spine of agrarian reform.
When the Government of India revoked J&K's limited autonomy in August 2019, it did not merely dismantle a constitutional framework. It opened the floodgates.
Gulam Nabi Bhat, a farmer in his mid-sixties from Wathoora village in Budgam, walks me through what remains of his fields that sit at the base of the Damodar Karewa, the plateau that now hosts Srinagar airport.
The Road That Took Their Land
The newly built Srinagar Semi Ring Road cuts directly through this landscape. Wathoora alone has lost around 225 kanals of prime farmland to the project. Gulam Nabi stops beside his small surviving patch, where, with help from the horticulture department, he has planted a high-density apple orchard. He lost eight kanals (one acre) to road construction. The remaining land stays waterlogged for months. The road's elevated embankment blocks the natural flow of water, turning his field into a shallow pool after every rainfall.
Frustrated by years of neglect, he filed a petition before India's National Green Tribunal challenging the road's environmental clearances. The Tribunal acknowledged the impact and directed inspections. On the ground, little has changed.
"The road took my land once when it was built," he says, "and now it's taking it again, piece by piece, every time it rains."
He points toward the highway, dust settling on the leaves of his young apple trees. "Look at this pollution; it's killing what's left of my farm. Nobody cares. I've watched this land change, foot by foot, into concrete of roads, malls, and buildings that often stay empty. The land is vanishing fast, and I don't know what it will look like in the years ahead."
Land, Infrastructure, And The Architecture Of Dispossession
The numbers tell a story the government prefers not to narrate. Since August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed an unprecedented wave of land acquisition under the banner of infrastructure and development.
The construction of 30 new satellite townships alone accounts for nearly 118,000 kanals (14,750 acres) across the valley. The Jammu Ring Road absorbed another 4,730 kanals. More than 8,600 acres have been earmarked for new industrial estates. The semi-Ring Road corridor cuts through six central Kashmir districts; in Srinagar and Budgam, 55 revenue villages have been designated "no-construction zones," freezing farmers' ability to sell, develop, or even improve their land.
Railways and highways add further layers. Projects like the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link account for at least 5,000 additional kanals. The cumulative area acquired for highways, military, and institutional development since 2019 alone surpasses 6,600 kanals, with total land converted for public projects likely exceeding 140,000 kanals (around 17,500 acres) by 2025.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways frames the Srinagar Ring Road as a "strategic mobility project," emphasising connectivity to border areas such as Baramulla, Uri, Kupwara, Bandipora, and Ganderbal, and the movement of heavy machinery. This dual-use language signals that the road functions as both urban infrastructure and a military logistics corridor.
The alignment traverses 52 villages across five districts, which include areas with dense agricultural landholdings and high dependence on farming. For villagers whose land has been acquired, this "greenfield alignment" translates into dispossession, often with opaque compensation and limited avenues for redress.
A new ₹3,300-crore, 300-kilometre four-lane highway, NH-701A, linking Rajouri with Baramulla has also been green-lit, cutting across some of the most agriculturally and culturally sensitive terrain in Kashmir, through Shopian, Yousmarg, Doodhpathri, and Charar-e-Sharief. It falls under the Border Roads Organisation. Construction is expected to begin soon.
Mohammad Afzal, who works most days cutting grass at Gulam Nabi's orchard, owns only a small patch of land now, barely enough to sustain. "The aerodrome you see up there," he says, pointing toward the hill, "we had land there once, before it was taken for the airport back in the 1950s. Now, I go there only to look. It's all fenced, all under the army."
Wathoora, just fourteen kilometres from Srinagar's city centre, is emblematic of a larger transformation. Once a quiet farming village, it now sits under the weight of rapid urbanisation, where housing colonies, shopping complexes, and overlapping road networks steadily consume what was once fertile ground.
"We used to grow mustard, paddy, and vegetables," says another farmer from the same area. "This part of Budgam has always been known for its fertile soil. But over time, with the decline in irrigation and changes in our geography, people began to see land only in terms of commercial value. Land that once fed our families for generations is now seen as a means to profit."
The Road And The Silence
The consequences of this shift are often felt even before construction begins.
On my way to Nowgam village in Shopian district, I pulled over to ask two men about rumoured road-planning through local apple orchards. Assuming I was a government official, they leaned in. No signs, no construction yet, they said. But most landowners had already received compensation months earlier. When I asked if anyone had objected, they exchanged a brief smile.
"Who would say no?" one of them asked. "Even if the project doesn't serve the community, when the government decides, it decides. It's safer to stay quiet and accept what's offered."
A few kilometres ahead, a red concrete demarcation pole stood inside an apple orchard. A man nearby was grazing a single sheep, likely for Eid sacrifice. I asked if I could enter. He nodded.
"Did you receive any notice before this was marked for the NH-444 expansion?" I ask him.
"No," he said. "Nothing at all." He recalled a winter day when a group of men arrived to conduct a survey, drones buzzing above them. When villagers asked questions, they were told only that the road would be widened. Later, horticulture officials arrived to explain compensation for trees to be cut. Around forty households are expected to lose their orchards, often their only source of income. This summer may be their last.
In Nowgam, the road is not yet built. But its presence is already felt. It exists as a line drawn through livelihoods, choices, and a silence shaped by inevitability.
Lines In The Orchard
In Trenz village, about ten kilometres from Shopian town, two men were idly waiting near a newly constructed car wash station, with no vehicles in sight. Even before I could ask anything, Abdul Rehman, a middle-aged farmer, began speaking. He recalled the survey conducted in the autumn of 2024, when news first broke about a railway line, or possibly a station, planned through this land.
"The nearest train station is in Qazigund, just thirty minutes away by shared taxi," Abdul said. "Shopian town is ten minutes from here. You can reach any corner of this district in under an hour. Why do we need a railway at the cost of our fields, our trees, our survival?"
Shopian is not just a district. It is the apple heartland of Kashmir, producing 3 to 3.5 lakh metric tonnes annually across 26,231 hectares. Recent hailstorms had already damaged crops; farmers were bracing for a low yield and lower income. The buzz around the railway project had quieted, but the fear had not.
One farmer, quiet until then, described the winter day when non-local men arrived with drones and gypsum powder, dropping marks across the land without explanation or notice. He paused, then said: "Only Allah knows what Modi is planning. But he hates us, that much is clear."
Then, more quietly: "We won't let anyone take our land. If we stay silent now, it's not just our orchards we lose; it's the future of our children."
The group walked me into the orchards, apple trees, some nearly forty years old, still standing in dense, vivid green. Four men talked among themselves about what the railway would mean.
"Modi is on a mission," one said. "Maybe next they'll build cantonments here. If they're taking our land, they should at least build houses for us. Let them take the whole village."
As I finish recording a long conversation with the men, I am left with a quiet sense of awe at their resilience. I prepare to leave, and they point out the shortest way back to Shopian – the same broken road we had travelled earlier. After a final exchange of goodbyes, I promise to return
In February 2026, the government quietly shelved the proposed Awantipora–Shopian and Sopore–Kupwara rail lines on grounds of technical infeasibility, but new projects, including the doubling of the Qazigund–Srinagar–Budgam section and a fresh Baramulla–Uri line, remain on the drawing board.
For farmers in Trenz and Nowgam, the dropping of one survey offers little comfort when drones and gypsum markers have already arrived in their orchards, and when "infeasible" has historically meant little more than what they see as a temporary pause before the next alignment is drawn through the same fields.
The anxieties are exacerbated, farmers say, because the project was earlier suspended but after that the demarcation process began. It may be temporary relief, postponing their eventual suffering, they fear.
The Neglect Of Canals
Dr. Bashir Veeri, a sitting MLA of J&K's ruling National Conference from Bijbehara in Anantnag, walks with me through apple orchards heavy with late-summer foliage. He gestures toward a narrow and shallow stream - the Dadi Canal, built during the Dogra era. Then he speaks of something older: the Nandi Canal, developed in the fifteenth century under Sultan Zain-ul-Abideen at the urging of Sheikh-ul-Alam himself. Branching from the Veshov, a tributary of the Jhelum, it once stretched nearly eighteen kilometres and irrigated around 2,000 hectares across more than twenty-four villages in what was long known as Kashmir's rice bowl.
Today, the canal stands on the brink of collapse. Its embankments are choked with garbage, its flow weakened by illegal riverbed mining and unplanned concretisation. Dr. Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist, says mining in the Veshov Nallah has drastically reduced water flow.
"Leakage, overflow, and seepage show the complete apathy of the irrigation department toward this historic canal that once sustained life here," he says.
Dr. Veeri is blunt. "You cannot execute any developmental or infrastructural project without the consent of the local population. Yet they bypass the law, use force, and compel people to accept compensation for land taken for roads and highways. It is a shameful act of dispossessing - an attack on the soul of this community. And that soul is its agriculture."
Water-sharing in Kashmir was never merely technical; it was social, even sacred. I come from a village that hosts three irrigation canals, each feeding fields across dozens of villages downstream. I remember men, young and middle-aged, gathering at the local mosque after evening prayers, carrying torches and kerosene lamps, taking turns through the night to guard the water's flow, ensuring each village received its share. There was order in that rhythm, a quiet cooperation that kept the land alive.
That cooperation is being dismantled. The expanding web of highways across South Kashmir cuts through what was once the valley's rice belt, altering not just the geography but the circulatory system of its water. Traditional canals now lie clogged with silt and refuse, drowned out by the noise of excavators.
Each new upgrade erases something older and quieter. Systems that worked, even if imperfectly, are evaporating. From community-managed irrigation to state-managed construction; from water that fed crops to asphalt that feeds an economy of contracts, tenders, and clearances.
Beneath it all, farmers stand at the edges of drying canals, watching their crops wilt, uncertain whether the next project will restore water or take what little remains.
The Harvest That Is Gone
The land loss is measurable, and the numbers are alarming. Official records show that Jammu and Kashmir has lost more than 60,000 hectares of agricultural land since 2000. Between 2015–16 and 2022–23 alone, cultivable area fell from 741,000 hectares to 681,000 hectares, an eight percent decline. In Srinagar, farmland has declined by nearly 40 percent over two decades. Kulgam and Pulwama have each lost between 30 and 50 percent of their paddy area.
Kashmir now produces only 0.45 million tonnes of rice annually, enough to meet just 35 percent of domestic demand. According to the State Nutrition Profile published by NITI Aayog, UNICEF, and IIPS in 2022, the region faces a 38 percent calorie deficit, with average rural dietary energy intake at 1,897 kilocalories per person per day, well below the national rural average of 2,099 kcal.
Nearly 70 percent of households now rely on food grains imported through the Public Distribution System. The region currently produces only 30 percent of its food needs. Where families once prided themselves on feeding the valley from its own soil, today they depend on supply chains stretching far beyond the mountains.
"People need land to build homes," says M. Shaban, a farmer from Budgam, with a resignation that carries no trace of complaint. "The demand for plots has grown over the years. Most families from villages near Srinagar airport have now spread across what used to be our green paddy fields."
Once fertile paddy land is converted for a house, a complex, or even a small shop, it is permanently lost to cultivation. Such transformations, as experience and data both confirm, are irreversible.
A Roof Where Earth No Longer Breathes
Shaban lives at the foot of the Srinagar airport, an airfield that stands atop a Karewa, a fertile plateau that once nurtured rich soil and almond orchards. Folded into that plateau were villages like Gogoland, Rangreth, Kralpora, Wathoora, Buchroo, Lalgam, Panzan, and Gudsathoo – all dealing with loss.
In Trenz, one of the farmers describes his plot as the only inheritance he can pass on to his children, the foundation of their future.
"This land is our identity," he says. "It sustains us socially, economically, and politically. Losing it would mean losing everything."
Historically, Kashmir's farming communities broke the ground each spring with the confidence that what they sowed, they would harvest. Sheikh Noorani's verse, beyond poetry and aesthetics, was a covenant between a people and their soil. Today, as fields become highways, orchards become concrete, glaciers melt into rivers of loss, and canals clog under the weight of indifference, that covenant is being rewritten without the farmers' consent.
Kus kari Gongul?
The question is both a lament and a call to action. Who will sow? If not those who refuse to surrender. Those who still believe that to till the soil is to claim both dignity and survival.
(Note: The author developed a practical toolkit for farmers, shared during field workshops, to help them understand land acquisition laws, document their land, and assert their rights using Right to Information legislation. This report draws on fieldwork conducted as part of the Bertha Challenge Fellowship.)
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