Protect Apple Economy brighterkashmir.com

Agriculture is the backbone of the economy of Jammu and Kashmir. Despite vast swathes of agricultural land turned into residential and sometimes even commercial due to rampant urbanization, hundreds of thousands of people and their families are directly and indirectly associated with the sector, of which the horticulture forms a significant part. Despite three decades of insurgency in Kashmir, the ‘apple economy’ was willfully kept out of the ambit of political discourses. A PDP leader or activist was as entitled to grow and benefit from the apple economy as his or her counterpart in National Conference or even Hurriyat. Although the leaders have fought all-out verbal and sometimes physical battles on the political arena (who can forget the scuffle between the late Molvi Iftikhar Ansari and Akbar Lone in the heart of the assembly), this antagonism never reflected in their personal lives. But the situation in Kashmir has dramatically changed since the August 5 move of the central government. After businessmen and transporters, even the apple farmers are being threatened to ‘forget’ their fruit of labor, pushing them into a state of abject deprivation. It is perhaps for the first time that apple farmers are refusing and sometimes even forced not to sell their crops. Posters have come up reportedly in areas of south Kashmir in which farmers are being threatened with dire consequences were they to even attempt to sell their produce. Fruit-laden trucks have been set on fire and farmers have been beaten up. The killing of a fruit dealer and a driver, both non-locals in the restive south Kashmir’s Shopian and Anantnag district respectively in separate incidents earlier this month, has aggravated the matter even further. Now even those farmers whose crop is ready to be harvested are watching in distress, fear, and horror as their year’s labor of hard work turn into rot on trees. Although it will be too easy to pass judgment about who may be behind this phenomenon of terrorizing innocent farmers in Kashmir, this is the lowest that the so-called custodians of our collective morality can sink to justify their politics. Whose cause will it serve anyway if people who look up to their farms for sustenance, and put in their blood and sweat through the year, are denied what is rightfully theirs? J&K’s horticulture sector has anyway been ruined by the failed policies of successive governments. Let’s spare it the horrors of politics!