Dawn hits the upper Chenab hours before it reaches the towns below. Snowmelt starts moving through narrow gorges near Kishtwar, picking up speed and joining the Neeru, Kalnai, Kalgoni and Marusudar rivers along the way. 

Together these waters form the Chenab Basin, one of the most sensitive river systems anywhere in the western Himalaya. 

Communities in Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban have depended on it for generations, and now something bigger is being asked of it. 

Roads, tunnels, hydropower plants and growing towns all need sand, gravel and boulders, and rivers like the Chenab are the easiest place to get them. 

The bigger issue isn’t whether this construction happens. It’s whether anyone truly understands what pulling material from these riverbeds does to the mountains around them.

Mountain rivers work differently than the ones we are used to seeing on flat ground. Glaciers, landslides and heavy rainfall constantly feed the Chenab fresh sediment, and that sediment does real work. 

It holds riverbanks together, fills floodplains, refills groundwater and gives fish and other river life somewhere to live. Scientists sometimes call this process the engine that keeps a mountain river running. 

Take material out faster than nature replaces it, and that engine starts to sputter. Banks erode, channels shift, and the river stops behaving the way it used........

© Kashmir Observer