A little girl somewhere in an Indian state no longer waits for her father to return with evening treats. A local Good Samaritan gets loveful obituaries in thousands of social media posts for getting killed while saving tourists at Baisaran. And somewhere in the silence of an empty shikara on Dal Lake, echoes a bitter question: If tourism is just 7% of Kashmir’s economy, then why are we dying for it?

The government, the media, and the bureaucratic echo chambers have long portrayed tourism as the lifeblood of Kashmir. But scratch the surface, and the facts reveal something else. In a region with a Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) nearing ₹2.65 lakh crore, tourism contributes a mere ₹18,550 crore – roughly 7% to 8%. That’s right. The hyper-glorified, over-romanticized, violence-prone, risk-riddled sector we call tourism is not even a tenth of our economic backbone.

So why does the Valleyite bleed his peace for it? And why does an Indian tourist bleed his life for it?

Death in the Name of a Mirage

The April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack wasn’t just another incident. It was a tipping point. A slap across the face of those who insist Kashmir’s future lies in being a honeymoon destination rather than a knowledge hub, a self-reliant agrarian society, or a power-exporting region.

Twentysix lives were lost. Nearly........

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