A climate fix by Kashmiri farmers made them prosperous – but a rail project could undo that

“This is not a survey marker for me – it is like a dagger driven into my heart,” lamented Hafizullah Ganie, an apple farmer in Pulwama district’s Babhara village pointing to a bright yellow concrete pillar indicating the route a planned railway line will take through South Kashmir.

When the 27.6-km Awantipora-Shopian railway line is built, the project will consume Ganie’s half-acre orchard.

Similar survey pillars were installed in December in orchards in Babhara, Tikken, Keegam, Kunso and other villages in Pulwama and Shopian districts.

In December 2023, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Parliament that the final location survey has been sanctioned for this project.

The construction, villagers claim, will swallow hundreds of acres of orchard land and between half a million and 700,000 trees. The district authorities say they have not yet begun to estimate how much land will be required for the project and how many trees will be cut.

But since the markers were installed, apple farmers in several affected villages have held peaceful protests. They say that the railway line imperils the prosperous lives they have built since they shifted from paddy cultivation to apple farming around 25 years ago.

Since the 1970s, apple farming has lifted incomes in Kashmir, reshaping aspirations and making horticulture the backbone of the Valley’s economy. The...

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