By Muhammad Arbaaz Niazii

Kashmir has always treated water as more than a resource. It lives inside poetry and prayer. Lakes breathe with the seasons. Wetlands host birds on journeys older than borders. To grow up in the valley means growing up beside water.

Today that water retreats. 

A lake shrinks at the edges, a marsh turns to dry ground, channels clog, shorelines advance where water once stood. The disappearance moves slowly enough to escape outrage until one day the absence becomes obvious to everyone.

This goes beyond nostalgia. 

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India laid bare the scale of this crisis in its latest report on lake conservation in Jammu and Kashmir. Out of 697 identified lakes, 518, nearly three in four, have disappeared or shrunk dramatically. Three hundred fifteen lakes, 45 percent of the total, have vanished entirely, erasing more than 1,537 hectares of water spread.

These numbers represent erased geographies. Behind each vanished lake sits a story of neglect, encroachment, deferred decisions, and diluted responsibilities. Losses cut through administrative boundaries. Lakes under the Forest Department, the Revenue Department, and the Agriculture Department all proved equally vulnerable. The failure belongs to a system instead of a single institution alone.

Statistics give clarity, but they capture only part of what disappears. 

Dal Lake at dawn........

© Kashmir Observer