kashmir-trip-076SRINAGAR - As the chinar leaves change colour from green to crimson to yellow, autumn, the season of plenty in Kashmir, is at its peak. The countryside is buzzing with activity as peasants harvest their paddy crop and fruit growers pick apples in their orchards.

“Despite poor rains this year, we have a good crop and thanks to Allah, my family has enough to suffice till the next paddy crop is sown,” said Abdul Salam Rather, a farmer in north Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.

Some farmers in many north Kashmir areas like Handwara, Kupwara and some south Kashmir villages have not been so fortunate as hailstorms have destroyed most of their crops and fruit produce.

“Windstorms and hailstorms have destroyed our paddy crop and also damaged fruit produce in the area. The government is now preparing estimates of loss for compensation so that we don’t face starvation,” Ghulam Nabi Bhat, a farmer living in north Kashmir’s Handwara area, told IANS.

But the majority of farmers and fruit growers in the valley are not stricken with the vagaries of nature. The farmers are busy reaping, thrashing and collecting grain for the family and fodder for the cattle.

“It is said that a farmer stakes all his fortune when he sows the crop. The result is always in the hands of Allah. Everything has to go well before the crop is harvested and that is why we always spare a part of our produce for thanksgiving to the almighty,” said Habibullah Mir, another farmer living in the Mirgund area of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.

Despite the vast countryside with agricultural land holdings, the cultivable land in the valley is shrinking as horizontal expansion of cities and towns is taking a serious toll on the cultivable land because of constructions.

“There is a blanket ban on constructions on agricultural land and the government is contemplating stringent measures to ensure agricultural land is not used for house-making, etc,” a senior officer of the revenue department told IANS, not wishing to be identified.

Despite the official ban, there has been a mushrooming of houses and commercial complexes on agricultural land around summer capital Srinagar and almost all other major cities and towns in the Kashmir Valley.

“The ban order on constructions on agricultural land is only observed in its breach. The Buchpora area in Srinagar city was totally agricultural until a few years back. There used to be lush green paddy fields and not a single shop or house in this area,” said Muzaffar Ahmad, 49, a resident of the area.

“In a matter of 10 years, all the agricultural land in the Buchpora area has vanished and shops, residential houses and commercial complexes have come up in the entire area.

“How can the government now demolish all these structures and restore the agricultural status of the land now?” he asked.

While most cities in the rest of the country have grown vertically because of multi-storeyed residential complexes, the urban expansion in the valley has been totally horizontal, claiming hundreds of acres of agricultural land here.

Unless the authorities step in and implement the ban on constructions on agricultural land in the valley, most of the paddy fields and orchards here would be replaced by shopping complexes and residential houses.

“That would be Kashmir’s biggest tragedy,” said a local ecologist.

(F. Ahmed can be contacted at f.ahmed@ians.in)