Kashmir’s apple industry, the backbone of its rural economy, is once again under siege. Not from pests, blight, or unpredictable weather, but from something far more shameful—mismanagement, road blockades, and a glaring absence of governance. Yesterday, Shopian town, the so-called “Apple Bowl of Kashmir,” turned into a parking lot for thousands of fruit-laden trucks. Growers, already reeling under rising costs of production and falling margins, watched helplessly as their produce sat idle in traffic jams stretching for hours. For a perishable crop like apples, every wasted hour on the road translates directly into financial loss.

A Recurring Tragedy, Not an Accident

What happened in Shopian yesterday is not an accident, nor an unforeseen crisis. It is a recurring tragedy that replays itself every autumn. From September through November, as the Valley’s apple harvest peaks, Shopian’s narrow roads choke, Pulwama and Kulgam overflow, and the Srinagar–Jammu National Highway collapses under the weight of trucks. Apples, packed with care in cartons, lose their sheen and freshness while waiting for clearance. Prices nosedive in the markets outside Kashmir, as stale fruit fetches far less than fresh produce.
For a region where horticulture contributes around 8% of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and sustains nearly 3.5 million people, such negligence is unforgivable. It is not nature’s wrath; it is the state’s failure to anticipate and plan for what everyone knows is coming.
The Srinagar–Jammu Highway: Kashmir’s Noose
The Srinagar–Jammu National Highway has long been advertised as Kashmir’s “lifeline.” In reality, it has become the Valley’s noose. Frequent landslides, erratic closures, and hours-long traffic snarls have made it the weakest link in Kashmir’s economic chain. For decades, successive governments have promised to upgrade it, to expand corridors, to build bypasses. Yet the ground reality remains the same: an outdated, overburdened road bearing the load of an entire economy.
Every season, the same scenes unfold—apple trucks crawling at snail’s pace, police struggling with diversions, and frustrated growers counting their losses. Instead of being an enabler of trade, the highway has become a choke point that strangles it.

Mughal Road: An Unfulfilled Promise

The Mughal Road was once hailed as the game-changer, an alternative route that would relieve pressure from the Srinagar–Jammu Highway. Yet, despite its potential, the road remains an underperforming, half-baked promise. Poor connectivity, inadequate maintenance, and lack of supporting infrastructure have left it unreliable for large-scale outward transportation.
Growers pin their hopes on it each year, only to be disappointed when road conditions, weather closures, or administrative red tape render it ineffective. A road that could have transformed the apple economy has been reduced to a seasonal gamble. What should have been Kashmir’s lifeline remains nothing more than a neglected by-lane.

Governments, Past and Present: Guilty Alike

Here lies the bitter truth: governments—past and present—are equally guilty. Each administration has promised infrastructure upgrades, alternate highways, scientific traffic management. Each administration has walked away leaving growers stranded on the same crumbling routes.
Not one has crafted a horticulture-specific transport policy. Not one has prepared for the predictable surge in traffic during harvest months. Instead, the state relies on reactive firefighting: ad hoc diversions, half-hearted advisories, and temporary traffic controls. Governance by guesswork has become the norm, while growers bleed crores of rupees in losses every year.
This is not mere inefficiency; it is negligence bordering on betrayal. When an economy that feeds millions is treated with such indifference, the state abdicates its duty.

Decades-Old Roads, Decades-Old Excuses

Kashmir’s roads tell the story of its neglect. Shopian, Pulwama, Kulgam—districts that produce the bulk of Kashmir’s apples—still funnel their produce onto the same narrow, decades-old roads that were never designed for modern-day traffic volumes. Despite ambitious announcements of four-laning projects, fruit corridors, and bypass highways, little has materialized beyond ceremonial foundation stones and political speeches.
Why, in 2025, does a region that produces over 70% of India’s apples still depend on a single, congested highway? Why are bypasses and freight corridors still “under construction,” while growers count their losses? Why are modern traffic management systems absent in a place that desperately needs them?
The truth is simple: there has never been political will to prioritize horticulture infrastructure. Projects are announced for optics, not outcomes. Plans exist on paper, but not on the ground. The excuses are decades old, but so are the roads.

The Human Cost of Neglect

Behind these statistics and failures lies a human cost. Growers spend the entire year tending their orchards—pruning, spraying, harvesting. They invest money, labor, and hope into every box of apples. Yet, when the moment comes to reap the reward of their hard work, they are betrayed by broken roads and absent governance.
For many families, delayed transportation means their apples sell at throwaway prices. Loans remain unpaid, households sink into debt, and frustration simmers. The apple grower of Kashmir does not ask for subsidies or handouts. He asks only for the right to move his produce on time. That such a modest demand remains unmet is an indictment of the entire system.

The Way Forward: Enough of Excuses

If the apple industry of Kashmir is to survive and thrive, the state must move beyond tokenism and lip service. The following measures are urgent, not optional: Dedicated Fruit Corridors: Create exclusive, priority lanes for fruit trucks during the harvesting season. Apples cannot afford to wait in traffic. Mughal Road Overhaul: Invest seriously in upgrading the Mughal Road into a reliable, high-capacity alternative. Complete pending projects and maintain it round the year.
Modern Traffic Management: Introduce real-time traffic monitoring, smart diversions, and scientific regulation, rather than relying on outdated manual controls. Accountability in Projects: Fix deadlines for under-construction highways and enforce penalties for delays. Farmers should not pay the price for bureaucratic lethargy. Expert Planning: Involve road planners, transportation engineers, and logistics experts—not just bureaucrats—in crafting policies. Infrastructure must be designed for today’s needs, not yesterday’s. Stakeholder Consultation: Growers, traders, and transporters must be included in decision-making. Only those who face the problem daily can offer practical solutions.

Conclusion

A Call for Vision and Responsibility Kashmir’s apples feed families, fuel trade, and sustain an entire economy. Yet the grower, after months of toil in his orchard, loses everything on the highway. Yesterday’s blockade in Shopian is not just a traffic jam—it is a metaphor for a system stuck in neutral, where promises of progress never translate into reality.
This is where road planners and transportation departments must step up. Kashmir cannot continue to run its biggest industry on the back of outdated, overstretched roads. The reality of today demands modern highways, bypasses, logistic hubs, and scientific traffic management systems. It is a huge economic loss that projects for new highways remain incomplete, gathering dust, while growers remain trapped in jams on roads built for a bygone era.
The orchards of Kashmir have kept their promise of abundance. Now it is the turn of the state to deliver—by building infrastructure that matches the needs of the time. Anything less is not just incompetence; it is betrayal. Unless this cycle of neglect is broken, Kashmir’s apples will continue to rot not in the orchards, but on the roads that should have carried them to the world.

Email:---------------------amanuk653@gmail.com