Kashmir faces floods that grow more destructive with each heavy downpour. 

Government teams issue alerts, close schools, and mobilize responders whenever satellites spot intense rain. 

But the waters still surge into homes, markets, and fields. 

Technology delivers precise warnings, yet the disasters intensify because people have seized the rivers’ space. 

Encroachment on the Jhelum, its tributaries, streams, wetlands, and floodplains stands as the central driver that turns manageable rain into catastrophe. 

Restoration of these waterways provides the only path to genuine safety.

A century ago, land records captured a valley where natural systems worked unhindered. 

Rivers flowed in wide channels, floodplains stayed open, wetlands soaked up excess water and released it gradually, and streams carried runoff without blockage. 

Heavy rains occurred then as they do now, but widespread urban flooding remained rare. Riverbanks commanded respect, people built away from vulnerable zones, and agricultural lands absorbed surges. 

The balance held firm, and communities thrived.

That balance has collapsed now. 

Population growth, rapid city expansion, and lax enforcement spawned widespread illegal construction. Buildings, shops, boundary walls, and roads advanced into riverbeds. Operators filled sections of the Jhelum, narrowing its width and dumping debris along its banks. 

Solid waste accumulated, tributaries shrank into choked drains, and many nallahs vanished beneath unauthorized structures or roads. Wetlands shrank under residential colonies and commercial projects. Flood spill channels disappeared, and rainwater lost its natural outlets and poured instead into populated areas.

The Jhelum once served as Kashmir’s backbone. It sustained agriculture, fisheries, tourism, transportation,........

© Kashmir Observer