Kashmir’s horticulture sector cannot survive on sympathy while policy support remains absent
The recent hailstorm that battered large parts of the Kashmir valley has done more than damage to orchards. It has exposed, once again, how fragile the Valley’s horticulture sector has become in the face of recurring weather shocks and chronic official inaction. From Tangmarg, Pattan, Wagura, Kreeri, Rafiabad, Baramulla and Bandipora to the Kangan belt, and after similar devastation in Shopian and Kulgam, fruit growers are speaking in one voice: losses are enormous, hopes for the season are broken, and the government’s response remains painfully inadequate.
This is not a routine setback. Horticulture is the economic backbone of rural Kashmir. It sustains lakhs of families and supports an entire chain of livelihoods linked to harvesting, packaging, transport and trade. When hail strikes at a crucial stage of the season, it does not merely destroy fruit. It wipes out investment, pushes families towards debt and uncertainty, and weakens one of the Valley’s most important sources of income. More worrying is the fact that such weather extremes are no longer rare. Hailstorms, untimely rain and erratic climatic shifts are now repeatedly battering the sector. Yet policy has failed to keep pace with this reality. The non-implementation of a proper crop insurance scheme for horticulture is indefensible. The continued absence of the Market Intervention Scheme is equally serious. Both have been demanded for years. Both have figured in official discussions and budgetary promises. Yet on the ground, growers remain exposed, season after season, to ruin with little institutional protection.
This is where the crisis moves from natural disaster to governance failure. No serious economy leaves its primary producers at the mercy of the skies without building a safety net. Kashmir’s fruit growers are not asking for charity. They are asking for a system that recognises risk, shares burden and protects livelihoods. That is the least a responsible administration owes to a sector so central to the region’s economy. The government must act on two fronts, and act now. First, it should immediately depute teams from the Horticulture Department and SKUAST to conduct a credible, time-bound assessment of the damage across all affected districts. Second, it must announce meaningful compensation and move swiftly on long-pending structural safeguards, especially crop insurance and the revival of the Market Intervention Scheme. The Valley’s growers have suffered enough from the weather. They should not have to suffer equally from delay, indifference and policy drift. If this latest calamity does not force a serious rethink, official assurances will sound hollow in every orchard that has been left shattered.