Two years ago, local friends in Pampore asked me to see something for myself. 

I travelled with a cameraperson to a stretch of land beside the saffron fields and found devastation I still struggle to describe. 

Rodents had dug enormous burrows through more than 2,000 kanals of farmland, devouring the corms that saffron farmers depend on to grow Crocus sativus, the flower prized around the globe for its crimson threads. 

The damage wasn’t done by careless neighbours or desperate scavengers. It came from the Municipal Committee of Pampore, the very body charged with enforcing India’s waste management laws.

I returned to these fields recently at the invitation of farmers from Patalbagh, Chandhara and Galander, and what I saw was worse. 

Roughly five dozen stray dogs now patrol the dumping site, drawn by the waste and dangerous enough that my group carried sticks for protection. 

Women and children who once tended these fields have stopped going near them. Sheep that grazed the surrounding land have been killed by the dogs over the past three or four years, farmers told me, and shepherds have abandoned the pasture entirely. 

What I witnessed was the slow strangulation of an agricultural tradition that has defined this region for........

© Kashmir Observer