Survival in Kashmir: The Daily War Beyond the Headlines
By: Javid Amin | December 25, 2025
Life in the Pressure Cooker
Imagine planning your day not by the clock, but by the erratic rhythm of power cuts. Imagine budgeting for groceries where prices are a daily gamble, and the milk you buy for your children might be laced with detergent. Picture a commute where crumbling roads devour your vehicle’s suspension and your precious time, only to be met by a labyrinth of ever-changing regulations requiring stamps from offices that may or may not be open. This is not a dystopian fiction; this is the ground reality of daily survival for millions in the Kashmir Valley.
Life here has transcended the ordinary challenges of urban living. It has become a meticulous, exhausting calculus of navigating systems that seem designed not to serve, but to subdue. The common Kashmiri is engaged in a silent, draining war—a war against bureaucratic obscurity, against infrastructural decay, against economic suffocation, and against the slow, grinding erosion of mental peace. The trauma of conflict forms a haunting backdrop, but the foreground is dominated by a more insidious, daily violence: the violence of systemic indifference.
This mega-feature is a ground-up report, built on cross-verified facts, official data where it exists, and the lived experiences of residents. It moves beyond the geopolitical macro-narrative to zoom in on the kitchen tables, the hospital queues, the cramped classrooms, and the choked roads. We dissect how essential pillars of society—food, health, education, power, and transport—are fracturing under combined weight, turning mere existence into a formidable act of resilience.
The Crushing Weight of Making Ends Meet
The Grocery Bill: A Monthly Shock
Walk into any market in Srinagar, Anantnag, or Baramulla, and the anxiety is palpable. The rising cost of living isn’t a news headline; it’s a physical weight in the shopping bag that gets lighter each month as money buys less.
Winter’s Brutal Math: While seasonal price hikes are expected, in Kashmir they are exponential. During the peak winter months of December to February, the prices of essential commodities like tomatoes, potatoes, and green vegetables often double or even triple. A kilogram of tomatoes, selling for ₹40-50 in September, can skyrocket to ₹120-150 by January. This isn’t mere inflation; it’s a supply chain seizure. The Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, the Valley’s lifeline, is notoriously prone to closures due to landslides and snow. Every day the highway is blocked, the prices in the Valley climb. Truckers speak of delays of 3-4 days, with perishables rotting, adding loss to the final cost borne by the consumer.
Staples Under Siege: It’s not just vegetables. The price of rice, the region’s staple, has seen a steady climb. Pulses like masoor and moong, crucial protein sources, have become luxury items for many. Cooking oil prices remain volatile, tied to global markets but amplified by local logistics. The result? Families are forced to make brutal choices. Nutrition is the first casualty. Meat consumption drops. Fruit becomes a weekly, not daily, affair. The traditional Kashmiri diet, rich and diverse, is being simplified into a survival menu.
Fuel & Transport: The Mobility Trap
If the kitchen budget is strained, the cost of moving—of simply getting to work, school, or hospital—is breaking the back of household finances.
The Double Whammy: The recent approval of an 18% hike in public transport fares was a body blow. When combined with the relentless rise in petrol and diesel prices, it creates a perfect storm. A commuter traveling from Ganderbal to Srinagar for work previously spent ₹40 on a bus fare. Now, they spend closer to ₹50. Over a month, that’s an extra ₹400-500, a significant sum for a daily wage earner or a low-salaried employee. For those using private vehicles, the fuel cost is a constant drain.
The Ripple Effect: This transport inflation has a cascading effect on the prices of everything. The vegetable seller factors in his higher fuel cost. The tuition teacher charges more to cover her bus fare. The entire local economy becomes more expensive to participate in. Mobility, a basic necessity for economic activity, is becoming a privilege.
Daily Survival Redefined: “Leisure” is a forgotten concept. A family outing to Dal Lake or a local park is now a major budgetary decision. Cutting back isn’t just on luxuries; it’s on education (private tuition gets dropped), on healthcare (postponing that doctor’s visit), and on social connections (visiting relatives becomes a calculated expense). The psychological impact is profound: life shrinks to the space between home and work, defined by scarcity and calculation.
The Silent Poison: Adulteration in Food & Medicines
When the very essentials meant to sustain and heal become sources of danger, trust in the system evaporates. In Kashmir, the menace of adulteration is a public health crisis unfolding in plain sight.
On the Plate: A Chemical Feast
The Milk Menace: Perhaps the most egregious example is milk. Ground investigations and periodic raids by the Food Safety Department have repeatedly found samples adulterated with water, detergent, urea, and harmful white paints to mimic richness. For a population where noon chai (salt tea) is a cultural staple, this is a direct attack on daily life. The adulterated milk is not just nutritionally void; it poses serious long-term health risks, especially to children.
Spices and Beyond: The contamination chain is long. Turmeric and chili powders are mixed with harmful synthetic colors. Honey is diluted with sugar syrup. Ghee is adulterated with vanaspati. Fruits are chemically ripened using calcium carbide, a known carcinogen. The drive for profit in an economically strained environment has created a shadow economy of dangerous shortcuts, preying on consumers’ lack of choice and affordability.
In the Medicine Cabinet: A Game of Russian Roulette
If food adulteration is alarming, the infiltration of counterfeit and substandard drugs into the market is terrifying. Reports from the Drug & Food Control Organization highlight seizures of spurious antibiotics, painkillers, and even lifesaving drugs. These fakes contain little to no active ingredient, or worse, harmful substances.
Expired Stock, Real Danger: It is not uncommon to find expired medicines on the shelves of some local pharmacies, particularly in rural areas. For a patient relying on medication for chronic conditions like hypertension or diabetes, taking an ineffective or harmful drug can have dire, even fatal, consequences.
The Enforcement Charade: Notices Without Nails
The institutional response to this crisis has been, at best, inconsistent. While the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and the local Drug Control body do conduct raids and issue notices, the follow-through is weak.
A Cycle of Inaction: The pattern is familiar: a news report highlights an issue, a raid is conducted, a few fines are levied, and a “warning” is issued. Then, silence. The systemic, root-and-branch cleanup—regular, surprise audits across the supply chain, blacklisting and prosecuting repeat offenders, creating robust public testing facilities—remains elusive. The consumer is left vulnerable, navigating a marketplace where vigilance is a necessary survival skill. The message is clear: you are on your own.
Healthcare: A System on Life Support
When sickness strikes, the ordeal of treatment in Kashmir often compounds the suffering. The healthcare system, caught between a crumbling public apparatus and an unaffordable private sector, fails those who need it most.
The Two-Tier Trap: Pay or Perish
Private Hospitals: Gold-Plated Care: For those who can afford it, state-of-the-art private hospitals in Srinagar offer quality care. But this care comes at an exorbitant cost. A routine consultant visit can start at ₹1000. Diagnostic tests—MRIs, CT scans—are priced at a premium. A simple hospitalization for a minor procedure can run into lakhs, pushing families into catastrophic health expenditure and debt.
Public Hospitals: The Theatre of Crisis: The alternative is the public system—places like SMHS Hospital or the Bone and Joint Hospital in Srinagar. Here, the crisis is one of overwhelming pressure. Chronic overcrowding turns corridors into wards. Patients share beds. Long, agonizing queues form for everything from registration to consultation to diagnostics. The infrastructure is often dilapidated, and critical shortages of staff—doctors, nurses, technicians—mean overworked personnel struggle to provide dignified care. Essential medicines are frequently “out of stock,” forcing attendants to run to private pharmacies.
The Unseen Epidemic: Mental Health in the Shadows
Kashmir is often described as a society grappling with collective trauma. Decades of conflict have left deep psychological scars. The constant stress of daily survival, documented in this report, adds a pervasive, chronic layer of anxiety. The result is a massive, unmet need for mental healthcare.
Scarcity and Stigma: Psychiatric services are woefully inadequate. There are far too few clinical psychologists and counselors for a population exhibiting high rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Furthermore, deep-seated social stigma prevents people from seeking help. Mental illness is often seen as a personal weakness or a spiritual failing, not a medical condition. This creates a silent epidemic where suffering is internalized, manifesting in substance abuse, domestic strife, and a profound erosion of social well-being. The system offers little respite, leaving individuals and families to cope alone with invisible wounds.
The Broken Promises: Electricity, Education, and Infrastructure
Electricity: The Flickering Pulse of Normalcy
The government’s promises of 24×7 reliable power ring hollow in many Kashmiri homes, especially during the bitter winter. While initiatives like the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) have shown tangible progress in Srinagar—with trials delivering uninterrupted supply to 48% of households and converting 83 more areas into zero-cut zones—the valley-wide experience remains a patchwork of hope and frustration.
The Winter Reality Check: Winter in Kashmir is a severe test for the grid. Demand peaks as heating becomes essential. Yet, local hydroelectric generation dips as water levels fall. The Valley becomes dependent on imported power from the northern grid, which is itself strained. The result: scheduled and unscheduled outages that can last hours. Households plan their lives around “power schedules”—cooking, charging devices, and running heaters during the presumed “on” hours. Small businesses, particularly those in hospitality and IT, suffer losses and operational chaos.
The Infrastructure Deficit: Beyond generation, the ageing distribution infrastructure—transformers, transmission lines—is prone to failures. A single fault can plunge entire neighborhoods into darkness for days, with repair times stretching due to resource constraints and terrain challenges. The progress under RDSS is commendable, but it highlights the depth of the existing gap. For many, electricity is not a utility but an uncertain commodity, its presence a relief and its absence a constant anticipation.
Education: The Crumbling Foundation
The education system, meant to be the ladder of opportunity, is instead a source of immense financial pressure and declining returns.
The Fee Stress: Private schools, catering to a middle class desperate for quality, hike fees with alarming regularity. Even government schools now have a plethora of “development fees,” “exam fees,” and “activity charges.” For parents, educating children is the single biggest financial investment, often consuming 30-40% of a salaried income.
Lost Days, Compressed Futures: The academic calendar is a casualty of Kashmir’s reality. In the 2024-25 session, schools recorded fewer than 150 instructional days against the mandated 220. The reasons are a tragic litany: extended winter breaks due to harsh weather, closures for snow or floods, and recurring unrest. This compression has devastating effects. Teachers rush through syllabi, depth is sacrificed for coverage, and students are left underprepared. The reported learning outcomes are consistently worrying, with deficits in foundational literacy and numeracy.
Infrastructure of Neglect: Many government school buildings are in a shambles—lacking proper heating in winter, functional toilets, or basic science labs. The promise of smart classrooms and digital education remains just that for most—a promise. Parents pay more, students attend less, and the quality diminishes, creating a generation anxious about its own preparedness for a competitive world.
Transport & Mobility: The Regulatory Maze
Mobility is not about freedom in Kashmir; it’s about navigating a labyrinth of obstructive regulations.
The Re-registration Agony: The government’s push for re-registration of vehicles from other states and stringent fitness tests, while arguably aimed at safety and order, has become a byword for harassment. The process is mired in opacity, long queues, and demands for ambiguous documentation. Small commercial vehicle owners—the backbone of local logistics—face the brunt. Each day off the road for compliance is a day of lost earnings.
Fare Hikes & Ground Realities: The approved fare hikes are rarely adhered to uniformly. Passengers are caught between official rates and what drivers demand, especially during peak hours or inclement weather. The absence of a reliable, comfortable, and regulated public transport system like city buses amplifies this chaos. People pay with their time, their money, and their peace of mind.
Roads: The Arteries in Decay
Kashmir’s roads are a metaphor for its infrastructural crisis. Once outside the city centers, they are a perilous mix of potholes, uneven surfaces, and incomplete repairs.
The Cost of Bad Roads: The wear and tear on vehicles is immense. Suspensions break, tires puncture, and alignment is constantly off. For families and small businesses, this translates into thousands of rupees in extra maintenance costs annually. The economic cost in lost productivity due to traffic snarls around repair sites is incalculable.
Safety as an Afterthought: Poor road engineering, absent footpaths, and erratic street lighting, especially on suburban and rural roads, make commuting after dusk a hazard. Accidents are frequent, adding trauma and further financial ruin to the list of public woes. A simple commute becomes a risky, time-consuming, and expensive endeavor.
The Vehicle Registration Nightmare: A Case Study in Bureaucratic Suffocation
If one needed a perfect case study of how systemic friction amplifies public suffering, the ongoing vehicle registration crisis in Kashmir serves as a prime, painful example. This isn’t merely about paperwork; it’s a multi-layered ordeal that consumes time, money, and sanity.
The Core of the Crisis: Following the change in the constitutional status of Jammu & Kashmir, the Union Territory introduced new series of vehicle registration numbers (beginning with ‘JK’). Owners of vehicles with the old ‘J&K’ series, or those with valid registrations from other Indian states, were mandated to re-register their vehicles in Jammu & Kashmir. On paper, a routine administrative update. On the ground, a perfect storm.
The Multi-Stage Gauntlet:
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The NOC Hurdle: The process begins with obtaining a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the original registering authority. For vehicles from distant states, this often requires physically mailing documents or traveling, a near-impossible task for most.
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The Fitness Test Bottleneck: Vehicles must pass a rigorous fitness test at official Automated Testing Stations (ATS). These stations are few, overburdened, and notorious for long queues. Appointments are backlogged for weeks, sometimes months. For daily wage earners or taxi owners, each day off the road is a direct income loss.
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The Documentation Maze: The list of required documents is long and subject to sudden, unannounced changes: original RC, insurance, pollution under control (PUC) certificate, address proof, identity proof, the NOC, tax clearance proof, and multiple photocopies of each. A single missing or “incorrect” document—an address mismatch of a single word—sends the applicant back to the end of the queue.
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The “Agent” Economy: This opacity and complexity have spawned a thriving parallel economy of “facilitators” or agents. For fees ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹20,000 depending on the vehicle, they promise to navigate the maze. Desperate citizens pay this unofficial tax simply to avoid the psychological torment of indefinite delays, effectively penalizing them for a mandatory state process.
The Human and Economic Cost:
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Financial Bleeding: Beyond agent fees, there are official re-registration charges, road tax differentials, and the recurring cost of travel and missed work. For commercial vehicle owners, this can total a devastating sum.
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Psychological Warfare: The process is characterized by uncertainty, contradictory information from different officials, and a palpable sense of powerlessness. Applicants speak of being sent from one window to another, of rules being interpreted differently on different days.
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Immobilization: Until the process is complete, which can take 3-6 months for a smooth case, owners live under threat of fines and vehicle seizure during police checks. Their asset—essential for livelihood or family mobility—exists in a legal limbo.
This crisis exemplifies the core argument: a rule implemented without creating the capacity for humane, efficient, and transparent compliance becomes an instrument of public harassment. It transfers the bureaucratic cost of a political-administrative change directly onto the shoulders of the common citizen.
Transport & Mobility: Costs Up, Rules Tighter
The registration nightmare exists within a broader ecosystem of transport distress.
Fare Hikes & Ground Realities: The approved fare hikes are rarely adhered to uniformly. Passengers are caught between official rates and what drivers demand, especially during peak hours or inclement weather. The absence of a reliable, comfortable, and regulated public transport system like city buses amplifies this chaos.
Roads: The Arteries in Decay
Kashmir’s roads are a metaphor for its infrastructural crisis. Once outside the city centers, they are a perilous mix of potholes, uneven surfaces, and incomplete repairs.
The Cost of Bad Roads: The wear and tear on vehicles is immense. Suspensions break, tires puncture, and alignment is constantly off. For families and small businesses—especially those already hemorrhaging money from re-registration—this translates into thousands of rupees in extra maintenance costs annually. The economic cost in lost productivity due to traffic snarls around repair sites is incalculable.
Safety as an Afterthought: Poor road engineering, absent footpaths, and erratic street lighting, especially on suburban and rural roads, make commuting after dusk a hazard. Accidents are frequent, adding trauma and further financial ruin to the list of public woes. A simple commute becomes a risky, time-consuming, and expensive endeavor.
The Human Cost: Living in a State of Permastress
Beneath these systemic failures lies the human toll. This is not just about economic hardship; it’s about the psychological corrosion of living in a perpetual state of uncertainty. The “common man” is not a statistical unit but a father lying awake calculating the next school fee installment, a mother worried about the purity of the milk she boiled, a student studying by a flickering candle, a shopkeeper deciphering the latest tax circular, and a driver spending his life savings to re-register the vehicle that feeds his family.
The constant engagement with dysfunctional systems produces a specific kind of fatigue—administrative trauma. It’s the stress of approaching a government window not knowing if you’ll be helped or humiliated, the anxiety of an unseen power cut ruining a day’s work, the helpless rage at paying for a service you never reliably receive, and the profound injustice of being forced to bribe an agent for a mandatory legal process. This daily grind of micro-stressors, layered over historical trauma, creates an environment where simply getting through the day is an achievement. Coping is the norm; thriving seems a distant dream.
Conclusion & The Path Forward: From Survival to Dignity
Kashmiris are not asking for miracles. They are asking for the basics of dignified modern life: reliable electricity, safe food, accessible healthcare, quality education, and transparent, humane governance. The gap between policy on paper and implementation on the ground is the valley where their suffering thrives. The vehicle registration crisis is a stark lesson: systems must be built for people, not people for systems.
The solutions are not rocket science; they are matters of political will and administrative empathy:
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Unified Digital Service Windows: A single, transparent portal for all citizen-government interactions—power bills, school admissions, and most urgently, vehicle-related compliance. Enable online NOC applications, fitness test appointments, and document uploads. Eliminate the physical queue and the agent.
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Radical Transparency: Public, real-time dashboards for electricity outage schedules, road repair timelines, drug inspection reports, school attendance records, and average processing times for vehicle registration at each center. Let data hold systems accountable.
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Protected Essential Sectors: Legislate a mandatory 200+ academic day year with built-in recovery plans. Create a strategic food and medicine reserve for winter months to stabilize prices and availability. For vehicle rules, implement amnesty windows, home-based fitness checks for the elderly/disabled, and standardized, fixed fee structures.
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Humane Enforcement & Targeted Relief: Shift from a punitive to a facilitative model. Offer compliance concessions and staggered payment plans for road tax to low-income groups. Establish citizen helpdesks in every district with mandated resolution times, specifically for grievance redressal in chaotic processes like registration.
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Invest in Mental Health: Make psychosocial support a core component of the public health response, integrating it into primary health centers and schools to de-stigmatize and democratize access. A population under this much systemic stress needs therapeutic infrastructure.
The gains in Srinagar’s electricity sector under RDSS prove that improvement is possible with focused investment and intent. The education data and the registration chaos, however, show how quickly those gains are nullified by parallel failures. A society cannot be built in fragments. The Kashmiri people have shown unimaginable resilience. They now deserve systems that match that resilience, not systems that perpetually test it. The goal must shift from managing survival to enabling a life—a life defined not by stress and struggle, but by security, opportunity, and the simple, profound peace of a predictable day.
Bottom Line: Survival should not be the pinnacle of aspiration. Until the mechanisms of daily life—the rules, the wires, the roads, the classrooms, and the registration offices—are aligned with the people’s right to a dignified existence, Kashmir will remain a place where extraordinary human spirit is spent overcoming ordinary obstacles. The time for that alignment is now.
Conclusion & The Path Forward: From Survival to Dignity
Kashmiris are not asking for miracles. They are asking for the basics of dignified modern life: reliable electricity, safe food, accessible healthcare, quality education, and transparent governance. The gap between policy on paper and implementation on the ground is the valley where their suffering thrives.
The solutions are not rocket science; they are matters of political will and administrative empathy:
-
Unified Digital Service Windows: A single, transparent portal for all citizen-government interactions—power bills, vehicle registrations, school admissions. Reduce the need for physical visits and middlemen.
-
Radical Transparency: Public, real-time dashboards for electricity outage schedules, road repair timelines, drug inspection reports, and school attendance records. Let data hold systems accountable.
-
Protected Essential Sectors: Legislate a mandatory 200+ academic day year with built-in recovery plans. Create a strategic food and medicine reserve for winter months to stabilize prices and availability.
-
Humane Enforcement & Targeted Relief: Shift from a punitive to a facilitative model. Offer compliance concessions to low-income groups. Establish citizen helpdesks in every district with mandated resolution times.
-
Invest in Mental Health: Make psychosocial support a core component of the public health response, integrating it into primary health centers and schools to de-stigmatize and democratize access.
The gains in Srinagar’s electricity sector under RDSS prove that improvement is possible with focused investment and intent. The education data, however, shows how quickly those gains are nullified by parallel failures. A society cannot be built in fragments. The Kashmiri people have shown unimaginable resilience. They now deserve systems that match that resilience, not systems that perpetually test it. The goal must shift from managing survival to enabling a life—a life defined not by stress and struggle, but by security, opportunity, and the simple, profound peace of a predictable day.
Bottom Line: Survival should not be the pinnacle of aspiration. Until the mechanisms of daily life—the rules, the wires, the roads, the classrooms—are aligned with the people’s right to a dignified existence, Kashmir will remain a place where extraordinary human spirit is spent overcoming ordinary obstacles. The time for that alignment is now.
