Kashmir’s New Mountain Policy Must Look Beyond Roads

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By Dr S Bashir Ahmad Veeri

Jammu and Kashmir has spent years pursuing connectivity through roads, tunnels and new tourist destinations. These projects promise shorter journeys, easier access to markets and fresh economic opportunities. But in a region where slopes can fail, rivers change course and rainfall can overwhelm drainage systems, the definition of progress needs closer scrutiny. 

A road built on an unstable hillside or a tourist spot that runs short of water can leave people paying the price of development even after the construction work ends.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s announcement of a comprehensive Mountain Development Policy at the 13th Sustainable Mountain Development Summit at SKUAST-Kashmir’s Shalimar campus on October 12, 2026, presents an opportunity to change those priorities. 

Jammu and Kashmir needs a development model that begins with the limits of its terrain, protects the livelihoods sustained by its mountains and holds public agencies accountable for the consequences of their decisions.

The scientific evidence already exists to make that shift possible. The challenge is to ensure that research influences decisions before machines reach a hillside and contracts commit public money.

A study published on August 28, 2026, in Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Portfolio, mapped 42,950.43 square kilometres of mountainous terrain in Jammu and Kashmir. Led by Professor Avtar Singh Jasrotia and researchers from the University of Jammu’s Department of Geology, it assessed landslide susceptibility using factors such as slope, rock type, rainfall, drainage, land use and proximity to roads.

Its findings should command attention. About 28.08 per cent of the mapped area, equivalent to roughly 12,062 square kilometres, falls within high or very high landslide-susceptibility zones. Proximity to roads also emerged as an important variable in the modelling.

These findings do not make road construction inherently harmful. Roads connect patients to hospitals, children to schools and apple growers to markets. They become dangerous when engineering decisions overlook the ground beneath them. 

A hillside cannot be treated as an empty surface awaiting excavation, particularly when its geology, drainage and exposure to rainfall determine how it will respond to construction.

A related landslide study involving engineers and faculty members in geology and geography was completed last year, with this writer among its authors. 

A paper examining landslide risks along national highways in Jammu and Kashmir was presented at a conference in New Zealand on February 3 and 4, 2026. Such work gives policymakers a growing body of evidence to consult before approving projects.

Major road, tunnel and hill-cutting proposals should undergo geotechnical investigations, susceptibility mapping and independent technical scrutiny before tenders are issued. 

Designs should include appropriate slope stabilisation, bioengineering and cross-drainage systems. Construction debris must stay out of streams, forests and farmland. 

Executing departments and contractors should face clear accountability for preventable damage during construction and throughout the maintenance period.

The difficulty lies partly in the distance between research and administration. 

Jammu and Kashmir has experience in bringing scientific expertise into public policy, but the follow-through has often been inadequate.

During this writer’s tenure as chairman of the Environment Committee of the Legislative Council, the committee consulted forest officers, universities and climate specialists, including experts from Hyderabad and Delhi. It also organised awareness programmes at nearly a dozen district headquarters. A document containing recommendations was prepared with expert input, but the proposals did not translate into policy.

That history points to a problem deeper than a shortage of information. Research has limited public value when departments fail to turn its findings into rules, budgets and decisions. Revisiting earlier reports could help the government build on existing work, identify unanswered questions and avoid repeating exercises whose recommendations remain unimplemented.

Climate variability makes this institutional failure more consequential. 

Shifting precipitation, changing snow conditions, prolonged dry spells and intense rainfall can expose infrastructure designed around historical averages to stresses its designers underestimated. 

A mountain policy must account for these changing conditions before a project receives financial approval.

A publicly accessible Himalayan Environmental Information System could bring together rainfall, snowpack, groundwater, spring discharge, river flows and landslide records. Major transport, hydropower and urban-development projects should undergo formal climate-risk screening. 

Springs, wetlands, floodplains and natural drainage channels need enforceable protection, with planning organised around watersheds and river basins rather than administrative boundaries alone.

The same discipline must govern land use. According to figures cited in the Jammu and Kashmir Economic Survey 2025-26, agriculture and allied activities contribute 20.45 per cent of Gross State Value Added. The Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2023-24 indicates that these activities support about 43 per cent of the workforce.

Those figures represent families whose incomes depend on productive land. Apple orchards, walnut groves and irrigated fields are working assets, built up through years of cultivation. Converting them to roads, buildings or commercial projects can weaken the rural economy that development is supposed to support.

Public projects should therefore face a strong presumption against diverting high-value agricultural land when feasible alternatives exist. 

Urban growth should favour infill development and the reuse of previously developed land, subject to seismic safety, water availability and sewage-treatment capacity.

Tourism needs similar limits. Opening new destinations without functioning waste-processing and sewage-treatment facilities shifts the cost of commercial expansion onto local communities and the surrounding environment. Carrying-capacity assessments should set limits according to water supplies, traffic, slope stability and municipal services. A transparent environmental levy on tourism enterprises could help pay for waste management and ecosystem restoration.

These measures will remain promises unless the government confronts the fragmentation of responsibility. 

Public Works, Tourism, Forest, Irrigation and Flood Control departments, along with urban and rural local bodies, need a common spatial framework and shared environmental standards. Risk assessments should be public, scientific scrutiny independent and consultation with farmers, elected representatives and specialists a formal part of project planning.

Progress should be judged through evidence of healthier watersheds, stable slopes, reliable irrigation and secure livelihoods, alongside the roads and buildings completed.

Jammu and Kashmir already has the research and institutional experience to begin this work. The proposed Mountain Development Policy can bring them together, provided it establishes binding standards and gives public agencies clear responsibility for enforcing them.

A tunnel can shorten a journey, and a new road can open a market. Neither achievement guarantees lasting prosperity if the hillside above the road begins to fail or the fields beside it lose their water. 

The real test of development in Jammu and Kashmir is whether people can build their futures in the mountains without undermining the natural systems on which those futures depend.

• The author is a serving legislator from South Kashmir and contributes occasionally on public policy and governance in Jammu and Kashmir. He can be reached at drveeri2@gmail.com.

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