notes. sounds. images
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 Gangul, 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 our 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. The bulls, adorned with colorful garlands, symbolized strength and hope. 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 Gangul is beautifully captured in the words of Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, also known as Sheikh-ul-Alam or locally known as Nundreish, a revered Sufi saint of Kashmir:
"Yus kari gongul, sui kari kraw"
"He who sows, shall be the one to harvest too."
A podcast about land, loss, and the quiet power of memory in Kashmir’s changing landscape.
Sheikh Noorani’s teachings extended beyond spiritual realms; they were deeply rooted in the realities of daily life. In another of his verses, he reflects on the transformation of tools of war into instruments of cultivation:
"Kartal phtrem ta garimas drati"
"I broke the sword and molded sickles out of it."
The sword turned sickle was not just a metaphor for peace, but also a call to dignity through cultivation, and a reminder that creation, not destruction, anchors societies. This profound shift from violence to nurturing, from destruction to creation, mirrors the evolution of Kashmir’s agrarian practices. Historically, the region’s farming communities endured the burdens of begar (forced labor) under feudal systems, where peasants were compelled to work without compensation. This exploitative system fractured the backbone of the Kashmiri peasantry, leading to widespread discontent and eventual reforms.
The transition from such oppressive structures to a more equitable system was marked by significant land reforms. The Land to Tiller Act aimed to abolish the feudal system, granting ownership rights to the actual cultivators. These reforms were not just legal changes. they represented a reclaiming of dignity and autonomy for the farmers, aligning with the spiritual ethos of Sheikh Noorani’s teachings.
But as I stand in the fields today, I see a new kind of dispossession unfolding. In the name of development, prime agricultural land—the backbone of Kashmir’s economy—is being systematically sabotaged and swallowed. Orchards that once stood as symbols of prosperity are being uprooted. They are being removed to make way for highways, railways, industrial parks, and military garrisons. Fertile fields that nourished families for centuries are fenced, demarcated, and reclassified, often without the meaningful consent of those who have lived and labored on them.
Through this blog, I try to capture this collision: the voices of farmers watching their land vanish, the memory of customs like Gangul that rooted us (Kashmiris) in the soil, and the stark reality of how political control often begins with the control of land. To speak of Kashmir’s land is to speak of its people, their identity, and their survival.
At the heart of this inquiry lies a haunting question: “Kus kari Gongul?” — Who will sow? This is no longer just a seasonal invocation of fertility, but a question about the future of Kashmir itself.
- Farmers’ Voices: In intimate conversations, farmers recount how their orchards, fields, and meadows are acquired, fenced, or demarcated without their consent. Their testimonies reveal not only economic loss but the emotional rupture of being severed from ancestral soil.
- Changing Landscapes: The valley’s physical geography is transforming before our eyes—green orchards replaced by grey highways, wetlands drained for housing colonies, glaciers carved by road-building machines. These visual shifts in the land are not neutral progress; they are evidence of systematic dispossession.
- Land Laws (and their violations): The post-2019 legal regime has opened Kashmir’s land to outside ownership, often in direct violation of protections that once safeguarded local farmers. These laws, altered or bypassed, reveal how the machinery of governance itself becomes a tool of displacement.
- Surveillance and Restricted Speech: Farmers who resist or raise questions face constant watchfulness—surveys, drones, and census-like exercises that catalog their lives. Freedom to speak, protest, or even publicly mourn the loss of land is tightly restricted, ensuring silence in the face of transformation.
- Corporate Expansion: New industrial policies and corporate acquisitions have shifted control of fertile tracts from cultivators to large private players. Agriculture, once a community-driven economy, is being restructured under corporate interests that rarely serve the farmer.
- Religious Tourism and Demographic Engineering: Alongside corporate control is the aggressive promotion of Hindu religious tourism projects, often built over fragile ecologies and agricultural spaces. Pilgrimage routes and facilities expand into meadows and forests, turning sacred landscapes into contested zones of identity and control.
- Climate Change: Farmers also confront the undeniable signs of climate shifts—cloudbursts, erratic snow, shrinking glaciers, and declining crop yields. These changes exacerbate the precariousness of farming, threatening Kashmir’s agrarian future from within as much as external forces do from without.
- Resilient Methodologies: Yet, amid these challenges, resilience endures. Farmers continue to adapt, organize, and resist. Through my work, I engage in workshops on land laws, training in visual evidence collection, and community dialogues aimed at empowering farmers with knowledge and tools to defend their rights. These small acts of resistance—archiving, educating, documenting—are attempts to keep alive the possibility of sowing again.
Thus, the question “Kus kari Gongul?” is both a lament and a call to action. Who will sow, when the land itself is under siege? Who will sow, when fields become highways, orchards become concrete, and glaciers melt into rivers of loss? And yet—who will sow, if not those who refuse to surrender, who still believe that to till the soil is to claim both dignity and survival?
chapter 1: at the crossroads of soil and struggle
Since August 2019, when the Government of India revoked Jammu & Kashmir’s limited autonomy under Article 370, the region was immediately placed under an unprecedented lockdown—marked by a strict curfew, mass detentions, and a total communications blackout that stretched for months. This moment not only dismantled the constitutional framework that had previously offered Kashmir a distinct political status but also ushered in sweeping legal, economic, and administrative changes under direct central rule.
Previously, land in J&K was primarily governed by the Jammu and Kashmir Land Acquisition Act, 1934, and a suite of local statutes such as the J&K Alienation of Land Act (1938), the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act (1950), and the J&K Land Grants Act (1960). These historic laws gave “permanent residents” significant protections: only state subjects could own land, and outsiders were barred from purchase or lease. Landmark reforms such as the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act redistributed large holdings from landlords to local tillers, restricting ownership and supporting agrarian communities.
Together, Articles 35A and 370 shielded local populations from external land grab pressures and large-scale demographic change, forming the legal backbone for the region’s agrarian reforms and land redistribution from large landlords to local tillers post-1947.
In recent years, Jammu & Kashmir has witnessed an unprecedented wave of land acquisition by the Government of India 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, transforming vast stretches of agricultural and horticultural land into urban clusters. The much-publicized Jammu Ring Road absorbed another 4,730 kanals (591 acres), reshaping the region’s physical and social landscape. Alongside urban expansion, a parallel drive for industrialization has seen more than 8,600 acres (close to 69,000 kanals) earmarked for new industrial estates, with Kathua district emerging as a hub for large-scale projects and fresh allotments.
These urban and industrial initiatives are tightly linked to the semi-Ring Road corridor, cutting through six central Kashmir districts. In Srinagar and Budgam, government notifications have designated 55 revenue villages as “no-construction zones,” freezing farmers’ ability to sell, develop, or even improve their land. While framed officially as “planned urban development,” the reality on the ground reflects large-scale expropriation: in Budgam alone, over 590 acres have already been taken for the Ring Road project, with compensation disputes unresolved. For farming families, this vision of progress translates less into opportunity and more into the slow erosion of their most vital resource—the land that feeds and sustains them. The MORTH (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways) report frames the Srinagar Ring Road as a strategic mobility project, emphasizing connectivity to “border/strategic areas” such as Baramulla, Uri, Kupwara, Bandipora, and Ganderbal. The language of the report highlights the road’s role in easing congestion and facilitating the movement of heavy machinery—signaling its dual function as both an urban infrastructure project and a logistical corridor for security and military purposes.
However, a closer reading reveals the political economy of infrastructure in conflict zones. The alignment traverses 52 villages across five districts (Pulwama, Budgam, Baramulla, Srinagar, and Bandipora)—areas with dense agricultural landholdings and a high dependence on farming. While the state presents the project as serving “inhabitants,” the primary beneficiaries, as implied by the report itself, are defense logistics and freight mobility rather than local communities. For villagers whose land has been acquired, this “greenfield alignment” translates into dispossession and disruption of agrarian livelihoods, often with opaque compensation mechanisms and limited avenues for redress. Railways and highways provide another layer to this dramatic reshaping of Jammu & Kashmir’s land use: projects like the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link and other highway expansions together account for at least 5,000 additional kanals (over 625 acres). Recent data suggests that since August 2019, the cumulative area acquired for highways, military, and institutional development alone surpasses 6,600 kanals, with the total land converted for public projects likely exceeding 140,000 kanals (around 17,500 acres) by 2025. This ongoing and multifaceted spate of acquisitions signals not just rapid development but also a profound transformation in rural livelihoods and the region’s socio-environmental fabric.
The conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural use is accelerating, undermining not only livelihoods but also food security in the valley.
Further, The Indian government has green-lit a major new infrastructure project: a 300-kilometre, four-lane highwaylinking Rajouri with Baramulla in north Kashmir, estimated at ₹3,300 crore. Officially designated NH-701A, this highway will trace portions of the existing Mughal Road and then extend as a new corridor, cutting across key areas such as Shopian, Magam, Yousmarg, Doodhpathri, Charar-e-Sharief, Pakherpora, Kellar, and Bafliaz before terminating near Surankote in Poonch. The project falls under the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and includes consultancies for feasibility, detailed project reports, and construction oversight provided to the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways. Covering terrain in some of the most scenic—and also most agriculturally and culturally sensitive—parts of Kashmir, this road is billed as a much-needed alternative to the congested Jammu-Srinagar highway, with construction expected to begin soon and be completed within two years, followed by a five-year maintenance phase
These practices cannot be understood outside the colonial logic of land control. Across histories of empire, the first step in establishing dominance has been to reorder land tenure systems, dispossessing communities and severing their ties to territory. In Kashmir, the Jammu & Kashmir Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Rules (2020) claims to provide safeguards, yet in practice, acquisitions have often bypassed these provisions. The reliance on outdated laws, such as the Jammu and Kashmir Land Acquisition Act of 1934, echoes a colonial-era strategy: to use legal frameworks not as protection, but as instruments of control.
The authorities, without respecting even their own laws, denied us fair compensation. 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?
Railways and highways provide another layer to this dramatic reshaping of Jammu & Kashmir’s land use: projects like the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link and other highway expansions together account for at least 5,000 additional kanals (over 625 acres). Recent data suggests that since August 2019, the cumulative area acquired for highways, military, and institutional development alone surpasses 6,600 kanals, with the total land converted for public projects likely exceeding 140,000 kanals (around 17,500 acres) by 2025. This ongoing and multifaceted spate of acquisitions signals not just rapid development but also a profound transformation in rural livelihoods and the region’s socio-environmental fabric. 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, the cultivable area fell from 741,000 hectares to 681,000 hectares, an 8 percent decline.
In some districts, the change is irreversible: in Srinagar, farmland has declined by nearly 40 percent over the last two decades, while Kulgam and Pulwama have each lost between 30 and 50 percent of their paddy area.
Gulam Nabi Bhat, a farmer in his mid-sixties from Budgam district, walks me through what remains of his fields in Wathoora village, at the base of the Damodar Karewa, the plateau that now hosts the Srinagar airport. 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 patch of surviving land, where, with the help from the horticulture department, he has planted a high-density apple orchard. He tells me he lost eight kanals (one acre) to the road construction. The remaining part of his land now 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, Gulam Nabi filed a petition before India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT), challenging the Srinagar Semi Ring Road’s environmental clearances. His case, part of a broader complaint by local residents, argued that the raised embankment of the road had blocked natural water channels, flooding entire stretches of farmland. The Tribunal acknowledged the impact and directed inspections, yet on the ground, little has changed. The drainage remains choked, the crops still drown, and the dust from the road still settles on the leaves of Gulam Nabi’s orchard.
We used to grow mustard, paddy, and vegetables. This part of Budgam has always been known for its fertile soil, perfect for such crops. But over time, with the decline in irrigation and the changes in our geography, people began to see land only in terms of commercial value. We used to grow mustard, paddy, and vegetables. This part of Budgam has always been known for its fertile soil, perfect for such crops. But over time, with the decline in irrigation and the 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. With the commercialisation of agriculture, farmers have shifted to high-density apple orchards, hoping for quick returns; but it’s not the same.
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
This case is the first of its environmental petitions from Kashmir challenging post-2019 land-use changes on ecological and livelihood grounds. Semi ring road has been classified as a “strategic infrastructure corridor,” hence the project bypassed full EIA scrutiny under Category B exemptions; a legal loophole often used in “linear infrastructure” like highways.Pointing toward the highway and the dust settling on the leaves of his young apple trees, he says,
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: roads, malls, buildings that often stay empty. The land is vanishing fast, and I don’t know what it will look like in the years ahead.
I met Mohammad Afzal, another farmer who owns only a small patch of land now, barely enough to sustain. Most days he works at Gulam Nabi’s orchard, cutting grass to feed his cows.
The aerodrome you see up there,” he points towards 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 kilometers from Srinagar’s city center, is emblematic of a larger transformation. Once a quiet farming village, it now sits under the weight of rapid urbanisation, where new housing colonies, shopping complexes, and overlapping road networks steadily consume what was once fertile ground.The farms stay in water by choked irrigation system and the road stands as a wall.
The rapid conversion of agricultural land for roads, railways, commercial property, and housing in Kashmir Valley is accelerating, threatening livelihoods and food security. This shift, driven by development and urbanization, has dramatically reduced areas under staple crops like paddy and increased reliance on imported food grains. Once fertile paddy land is converted for commercial or non-agricultural purposes, a house, a complex, or even a small shop, it is permanently lost to cultivation. Such transformations, as experience and date shows, are irreversible. Several farmers I met during my research spoke of how dramatically the landscape around their villages has changed over the past two decades. The once-continuous stretch of paddy fields has been slowly consumed by houses, shops, and construction sites.
Sajad Rasool 