Kashmir’s apple orchards, millions of jobs, face threat from rail line

Apple farming is Kashmir’s biggest economic driver, employing millions. Now a new railway project threatens many of those livelihoods.

Indian-administered Kashmir – Muhammad Shafi was working in his apple orchard in October last year, in Indian-administered Kashmir, when a group of men rushed in and started measuring his land without asking for his approval.

When he asked the men who they were and what were they doing on his land, Shafi said their response left him stunned. They were government officials sent to mark and measure his orchard for the construction of a railway line.

“They said the land will be used to lay a railway track and a road,” Shafi, 65, told Al Jazeera at his home in the Himalayan region’s Bijbehara area of Anantnag district. “They asked us to refrain from working on our lands.”

Since the officials’ visit, Shafi’s 1,500 sq metre (16,145 sq ft) apple farm has been deserted. Buds have formed on the branches, trees are mulched and it is time to spray them with pesticides.

But Shafi cannot tend to his farm, which is now lined with two 15cm (0.5 ft) concrete poles earmarked by the authorities for the proposed 77km (48-mile) Anantnag-Bijbehara-Pahalgam railway line, one among five such projects totalling about 190km (118 miles) across the picturesque Kashmir valley.

The land to be acquired for the construction is highly fertile for growing apples, the best-known export from the region.

Apple farming is the largest employment generator in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, with nearly 3.5 million farmers – 27 percent of the region’s population – involved in growing the fruit, whose export contributes more than 8 percent to the region’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The apple growers say they have