Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Malik Haroon crouches on the ground covered with white frost on an early winter morning in Dafferpora village in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
He traces his fingers on the bark of an almond tree – of which there are hundreds around – to check for signs of fungal disease.
“It’s fine,” he says, beaming.
With the scenic snow-clad Pir Panjal mountains in the backdrop, Haroon’s 1.25 acres (0.5 hectares) of orchard land, fed by the Rumshi Nallah River in southern Pulwama, are plush with groves that yield nearly 30 tonnes of apples, pears, plums and almonds every year.
However, the Indian government’s decision to construct an engineering college at the site in Pulwama – which includes almost all of Malik’s land – threatens to strip him and thousands of other cultivators in Kashmir of land, the source of economic livelihood for about 4 million people in the region.
“I earn $11,000 on average, annually, on account of their harvest,” Haroon, 27, tells Al Jazeera.
The income has helped his family of four sidestep widespread economic instability and an unemployment crisis in Indian-administered Kashmir since 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian government scrapped Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted a special status to the Muslim-majority region.
That status allowed the disputed region – also claimed by Pakistan – to make its own laws in all matters except finance, defence, foreign affairs and communications. The law protected the Indigenous rights of the region’s residents by barring outsiders from taking up government jobs or buying property there.
Apart from stripping the region of its special status, the Modi government also carved it into two federally governed union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
Since then, the government has announced dozens of infrastructure projects, claiming they will bring economic prosperity to the region and connect its people to the rest of India.
But residents and critics fear the slew of projects are aimed at tightening New Delhi’s control over the region, changing its demography by settling in outsiders and boosting access to areas along India’s tense borders with its archrivals China and Pakistan.
One of the projects that has triggered considerable anguish among residents in Pulwama is the establishment of a National Institute of Technology (NIT). The NITs are a government-run nationwide chain of engineering colleges, among the country’s most reputable tech schools. A whopping 600 acres (243 hectares) of land are being acquired for the college, according to a government notification issued on December 24, most of it prime agricultural and horticultural land and grazing grounds residents depend on for livelihoods.
“The proposed land transfer affects as many as 10 villages in Pulwama,” says Haroon.”This land is our lifeline.”
He says that most people in these villages have no economic pursuits other than horticulture.
“Some rear sheep for a living but even then, it is these grounds where the livestock come to graze,” he says.
New railway lines
It is not just a college the government has planned for the region. Since 2019, New Delhi has authorised a series of mega projects – roads, tunnels, railway lines and residential complexes – which critics say could destroy not just prime agricultural land and livelihoods, but also the Himalayan region’s fragile topography.
Kashmiris accuse the government of sidelining them while making decisions about their lands – without consent or proper compensation.
Ghulam Muhammad Tantray, 65, owns 1.25 acres (0.5 hectares) of orchard land at Dirhama, a small cluster of 150 homes amid a vast swath of green fields covered with thousands of apple trees in the Anantnag district.
“The orchard fetches me about $13,000 every year,” Tantray says.
But he fears losing his property after Indian railway officials arrived in Dirhama to conduct what they called a “survey” of lands in the area a year ago.
“We had no idea what was coming until the Railway Ministry revealed that it had commissioned a final location survey to add five new railway tracks to the region. We panicked like anything. It’s like losing something very dear to you. We have groomed this land and these trees like our children,” Tantray tells Al Jazeera.
The valley area of Indian-administered Kashmir has long had just one railway line connecting the southern hill town of Banihal with the Baramulla district in the north.
But the government plans to add five more lines crisscrossing the valley, for which hundreds of acres of land will be acquired, thereby eliminating flourishing apple orchards and other plantations key to the region. The upgrade is part of the government’s ambitious project to link Kashmir with the rest of the country through an all-weather train track, making travel easy and affordable for millions of Indians who visit the region for tourism or religious pilgrimage.
One of the five new railway lines will cross Dirhama, where a railway station will also be built.
“At least 80 of 150 homes in Dirhama will lose their key sources of income after the completion of the railway project,” says Tantray. “As for me, of the 1.25 acres [0.5 hectares] that I own, 1 acre [0.4 hectares] will be used up for the new railway station. What will that leave me with?”
Tantray says the villagers have held several protests, demanding the railway station be relocated and reasoning with government officials that they “never asked for it”.
“The land is our family inheritance. It has ensured our livelihood for generations,” Tantray tells Al Jazeera. “In the face of a rising unemployment crisis, this land is the only option my three sons will have in case they are not able to get jobs.”
Another resident, speaking on condition of anonymity, says: “Locals in Kashmir do not know how these projects will benefit them.”
Al Jazeera reached out to several government officials for their comments on the railway projects, but they did not reply.
Civil, military objectives overlap
Some of the nearly 50 infrastructure projects under way in Indian-administered Kashmir are about building more roads and extending its road connectivity with the border region of Ladakh, where Indian and Chinese troops clashed in 2020, triggering a military standoff that lasted years – with signs of a thaw between the Asian giants only now beginning to emerge.
Last month, Modi inaugurated a 6.5km-long (4 miles) Z-Morh road tunnel, built at an altitude of 2.6km (8,500 feet), which links Kangan village in central Kashmir with Sonmarg, a popular tourist resort on the way towards Ladakh.
Others reflect more clear civilian objectives.
A 250km (155-mile) road connecting the southern plains of Jammu to the region’s main city of Srinagar is being widened into four lanes at a staggering cost of $1.92bn (168 billion rupees), according to government documents.
Then there is a 6.84km (4.3-mile) ring road being built around Srinagar to allow vehicles – both civil and military – to bypass the traffic-clogged urban areas of the city and ease mobility with the districts of Baramulla and Ganderbal abutting Pakistan and China, respectively. The ring road will see new highways built through rice fields and apple orchards around Srinagar.
And then there are initiatives that could serve both civilian and military purposes.
The ring road, for instance, will be complemented by another 161km-long (100 miles) project, costing about $95m, which begins in Srinagar and will join the Baramulla road on its way to the border town of Uri, where it will intersect with another 51km (32 miles) four-lane section, easing the commute between the districts closer to India’s deeply militarised border with Pakistan.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at the Wilson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank, says the projects are intended to strengthen India’s military posture in sensitive border areas, with the repeal of Article 370 making it easier for New Delhi to push forward.
“These infrastructure schemes may be meant to bolster Indian national security interests, but the irony, given locals’ resistance to the projects, is that they could end up undermining them – and that is no small matter in a wider region where grievances against the government have been strong,” he says.
Pulwama resident Haroon also fears the proposed NIT project has military dimensions.
“It looks like this project is meant to create a more entrenched military presence here,” he says. “Otherwise, why would they need 600 acres [243 hectares] of land for the project? The 2014 guidelines issued by India’s Ministry of Human Resources put the ideal land requirement for NITs at 300 acres [121 hectares]. But this is twice as much.”
Altaf Thakur, spokesman for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the region, concedes that some of these projects “are of dual-use in nature”.
“But the fact is that they are also there to facilitate the local economy and eliminate travel-related hassles,” he tells Al Jazeera. “Obviously, a lot of thinking goes behind these projects. Why would we bring a project if it does not benefit the people?”
‘Death by a thousand infrastructure projects’
In another move that has prompted fears of a demographic change in the region, the government last year announced the setting up of at least 30 residential colonies within a 500-metre (1,640ft) periphery of the Srinagar ring road.
Fears of a demographic alteration arose in Kashmir in 2020 when New Delhi relaxed rules for Indian nationals to settle in the region.
Kashmiri academic Mohamad Junaid, assistant professor of anthropology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, tells Al Jazeera he fears the railway and other infrastructure projects are not based on Kashmiri people’s needs, “or even on future needs of the Kashmiri society”.
“They are meant to alter the landscape and disorient and disrupt the Kashmiri economy. It is death by a thousand infrastructure projects,” he says, adding the Kashmir Valley has “very limited agricultural land available which is critical for a large section of the society to sustain themselves”.
“Building such projects upon it will not only consume land but also disconnect communities and create barriers between them. While it is clear the railways are meant for Hindu pilgrimage and troop movement, it is even more worrisome that the government is creating ‘townships’ – for who? These settlements are not meant for Kashmiris.”
The BJP, however, accuses critics of trying to keep Kashmir “trapped in its violence-ridden past”.
“All those whose land is involved in these projects will be compensated,” spokesman Thakur insists. “These things don’t happen without consensus. The projects have long-term benefits and will maximise the economic potential in the region.”
Activists, meanwhile, describe the ongoing land acquisitions for New Delhi’s projects as “arbitrary”, alleging that some aggrieved landowners were being compensated under a 1990 law, which they say became outdated after New Delhi scrapped the region’s special status.
“The newly-applicable Right to Fair Compensation Act of 2013 promises compensation four times the market rate,” says Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist based in the region.
A retired government officer, familiar with the controversy regarding allegedly lower compensation to the landowners under the Srinagar ring road project, says the government invoked the 1990 law retrospectively because the 2013 law was not applicable when the notification for the project was issued in 2017.
“The compensation rates have to be drawn up within two years of the issuance of notification,” he says, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But in this case, it took more than three years. By the time it was prepared, Article 370 was revoked and a new law came into its place.”
But Haroon in Pulwama says he will refuse the government’s compensation or a job offered in place of his land.
“Jobs or compensation will last only for a few years. But this land has been passed down for generations,” he says.
“Just last year, 1kg [2.2 pounds] of almond we produced on this land sold for 250 rupees (almost $3). This year, it sold for 350 (more than $4). When considered in totality, that is a massive hike in income which a job or one-time reparation can never compensate for.”
The post ‘Our lifeline’: Kashmiris fear losing orchards, land to mega Modi projects appeared first on Al Jazeera.
