Mulberry trees have long stood outside many Kashmiri homes. Families planted them, fed their leaves to silkworms, and sold the cocoons to meet everyday needs, including schooling. 

Over time, this simple tree supported rural households and sustained a local silk economy.

But today, axes bite into those century-old trunks with growing frequency. Every falling tree topples a family’s future alongside the gnarled wood. The loss extends beyond shade and timber. Each cut destroys a biological factory that minted money for generations.

Mulberry leaves provide the sole sustenance for silkworms. The equation runs straight: trees feed worms, worms produce cocoons, cocoons become silk, and silk generates earnings. One mature tree yields between ₹5,000 and ₹15,000 annually in cocoon sales. 

This payout continues every season reliably for three to five decades. 

Thirty thousand families throughout Ganderbal, Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag, and Kupwara depend upon these earnings. Together, they maintain a rural economy valued between ₹150 crore and ₹300 crore each year. 

These numbers represent food on tables, medicine for elders, and fees for schools. They represent sons and daughters remaining in their homes rather than migrating to cities for domestic work.

Consider a farmer setting aside merely ten percent of his earnings, say ₹5,000 yearly, less than ₹420 monthly, into a simple fund growing at eight percent. 

Over three decades, that modest sum balloons to ₹6,11,729. Families saving ₹10,000 annually accumulate over ₹12 lakh during that same period. 

Multiply this arithmetic across all thirty thousand households. At ₹5,000 yearly savings each, the collective wealth reaches ₹1,835 crore after thirty years. At ₹10,000, the total hits ₹3,670 crore.

This represents basic mathematics, development dreams grounded in reality. The mulberry tree makes this possible. 

Remove the tree, and this future vanishes, completely, and permanently.

Kashmir produces India’s only premium bivoltine silk, commanding between ₹5,000 and ₹8,000 per kilogram on world markets. Farmers reinvesting ten percent of earnings into superior seeds, improved rearing methods, and better technology could double the sector’s value from ₹300 crore to ₹500 crore annually. 

Kashmiri silk belongs in Paris, Milan, and Tokyo showrooms. Over thirty years, cumulative sector value could reach between ₹7,500 crore and ₹15,000 crore. This requires living mulberry trees standing tall throughout the valley.

Combine lost earnings, savings destroyed before birth, and quality investments aborted, and the generational loss staggers, between ₹10,000 crore and ₹20,000 crore over thirty years. 

This equals thirty thousand children locked out of college educations. Thirty thousand women losing their sole personal earnings source. Thirty thousand families leaving ancestral villages to seek daily labour in distant cities. 

Compare this to development projects. A walking track costs several lakhs. Engineers can reroute such paths within hours when necessary. Fifty-year-old mulberry trees demand more than a single human lifetime to regenerate. The mathematics of development favours preservation over destruction. Meanwhile, the saw blades spin.

The mulberry tree functions like a fixed deposit issuing dividends each season. The principal remains whole while the tree stands. Every year brings returns through leaves, cocoons, silk, earnings, and hope. 

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Chopping such a tree means breaking a poor family’s savings before maturity. It tells mothers their plans face cancellation. It tells children that college must wait. It transforms self-employed farmers into wage labourers overnight.

This tree gave Kashmir everything during five centuries of existence. It demanded water pipelines, government schemes, or subsidies. It simply grows and gives. 

It asks only to remain standing.

Ensure it does. Protect these trees on behalf of our families, our children, and the Kashmir our grandchildren deserve.

Save the mulberry, save the silk, and save Kashmir’s future.

© Kashmir Observer