The monsoon has battered Jammu and Kashmir all week. Flash floods, cloudbursts and landslides have killed at least 23 people, with some counts nearing 28, and several remain missing. Poonch, Rajouri and Doda have suffered the worst. In Poonch’s Loran area, seven members of families died under a single landslide. Katra recorded over 107 mm of rain in 24 hours. Debris and shooting stones have blocked the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, and the Amarnath, Vaishno Devi, Shiv Khori and Machail Mata pilgrimages stand suspended for a third day.
The administration has responded well so far. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah returned from Delhi, chaired successive reviews and announced ex-gratia of Rs 6 lakh for the families of victims. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has secured assurances of full Central support. The Army, NDRF, SDRF, police and local volunteers continue rescue work in dangerous conditions. Suspending the yatras placed lives above religious sentiment and tourism revenue, and that decision deserves praise.
Praise, however, cannot replace answers. This disaster was predictable. The Himalayas are warming faster than the global average, and cloudbursts that were once rare now arrive every season. Construction on unstable slopes, felling of forests and building on floodplains have ensured that every heavy spell turns deadly. The floods of 2014 should have produced floodplain zoning, early warnings and stronger roads and drains. Eleven years later, Srinagar still floods after a day of rain, the highway still collapses at the same stretches, and the same border districts, already living with limited connectivity and weak housing, keep burying their dead.
The tasks ahead are specific. Now: search for every missing person, pay compensation without delay or paperwork traps, provide shelter and medical care, and reopen roads and restore power urgently. Within months: publish a white paper on why warnings and slope protection failed, install automatic weather stations in vulnerable catchments, and build mobile alerts that reach villagers in time. Over years: enforce a ban on construction in eco-sensitive zones without exemptions for the influential, plant forests, build check dams, and construct alternative routes that stay open in all seasons.
One more question hangs over all of this. The National Conference has taken its demand for statehood to Jantar Mantar and to towns across the Union Territory. The demand is legitimate. People who elected an Assembly in 2024 deserve a government with full powers to plan, budget and answer for disaster preparedness, rather than one that shares control with New Delhi. Statehood is the structure through which elected leaders closest to Poonch’s slopes and Srinagar’s drains can act.
The rain will stop. The questions about preparedness, governance and constitutional status should not. Nature has spoken. New Delhi and Srinagar must now answer.
