Kashmir’s Floods and the Fragile Economy

The sky cracked open over Kashmir this monsoon season. In mid-August 2025, Kashmir found itself once again under siege—not by politics, but by nature’s fury. A devastating cloudburst in Kishtwar and torrential monsoon rains across Jammu & Kashmir have triggered flash floods, landslides, and a humanitarian crisis of significant proportions. People lost their lives and a significant number were injured in Kishtwar and elsewhere in the region. The communities grapple with swelling rivers and disrupted livelihoods. Almost in unison, rivers across the valley—Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Tawi—surged beyond danger levels. Pilgrimage routes turned into disaster zones, communications went silent, and floodwaters redrew the lines between life and survival.

This anthropogenic induced natural disaster is not merely a environmental emergency. It’s an economic earthquake as well. They land squarely on one of India’s most vulnerable economies.

Vulnerability In Geography and Governance

Kashmir’s geographical beauty is also its burden. The valley sits in a bowl surrounded by steep mountains, its rivers prone to swelling rapidly in response to intense rainfall. Climate change has intensified this volatility: cloudbursts are more frequent, and rainfall patterns less predictable. Yet, these floods are not purely acts of nature. Years of unplanned urban growth, encroachments along floodplains, and inadequate drainage infrastructure have left Kashmir exposed.

Srinagar, a city under the much-touted “Smart City” initiative, offers a grim example. Despite crores of rupees invested, flood-mitigation planning has been cosmetic rather than systemic. Cycle tracks and ornamental footpaths may signal modernization, but when the Jhelum breaches its banks, the city’s core remains defenseless. After 10 minutes of rain, Srinagar turns into Venice—just with less romance and more floating garbage. Stormwater drains are choked, encroachments have shrunk river channels, and housing has sprawled across wetlands that once served as natural buffers. “Smart” infrastructure here has meant aesthetic projects rather than climate resilience.

This governance shortfall compounds Kashmir’s structural economic fragility. The region’s economy is deeply tied to agriculture, horticulture, and tourism—all sectors highly climate-sensitive. A single season’s devastation ripples across livelihoods, incomes, and state revenues, pushing families back into cycles of poverty and eroding years of development investment.

Economic Fault Lines Exposed

The floods have once again revealed the fragility of an economy that is geographically isolated and structurally imbalanced. Agriculture and horticulture, employing over 40 percent of the population, are particularly vulnerable. Orchards flattened by landslides, paddy fields submerged for weeks, and livestock losses mean a year’s income can vanish overnight. The damage extends beyond rural households: trade networks, cold chains, and supply chains that connect Kashmir’s apples, walnuts, and saffron to national and global markets are disrupted, eroding investor confidence.

Tourism, celebrated as a key growth driver in recent years, has been abruptly halted. Pilgrimage routes, hotels, and transport systems remain paralyzed, echoing the catastrophic 2014 floods when Kashmir’s economy suffered losses exceeding ₹1 trillion. Unlike industrialized regions that can absorb shocks through diversification, Kashmir’s dependence on climate-exposed sectors magnifies every calamity.

Urban economies are no less affected. Srinagar’s business hubs, from Lal Chowk to Polo View, flood with every monsoon surge, paralyzing commerce and damaging small enterprises. Informal workers, the backbone of retail and services, lose wages and security. These floods demonstrate that Kashmir’s economic ecosystem is not just vulnerable but brittle. It is unable to withstand the compound stresses of climate volatility, infrastructure gaps, and financial fragility.

The Failure of Urban Resilience

Srinagar’s Smart City project deserves special scrutiny in this context. This initiative was marketed as a flagship initiative to modernize Srinagar. But it has prioritized surface beautification while neglecting systemic resilience. The redevelopment of streets and waterfronts has not been matched by serious investments in stormwater management, sewage systems, or flood early-warning networks. In a region where memories of the 2014 floods remain raw, this represents a policy failure.

Wetlands, historically Kashmir’s natural flood sinks, have been systematically encroached upon. The Smart City blueprint should have integrated wetland restoration, raised embankments, and modern drainage, yet such interventions remain absent. Instead, heavy rains routinely transform Srinagar’s roads into rivers, reminding residents that “smartness” has been defined in narrow, cosmetic terms, rather than as urban resilience.

This is symptomatic of a larger planning deficit: development schemes often operate in silos, disconnected from disaster management or climate adaptation frameworks. The gap between planning rhetoric and execution has left Kashmir with infrastructure that is ill-prepared for its most predictable threat—flooding.

A Policy Vacuum on Climate and Economy

The economic narrative of Kashmir has been heavily focused on unlocking its tourism potential, horticultural exports, and infrastructural integration with the rest of country. While these strategies promise growth, they lack a climate risk lens. The region’s economic roadmaps do not adequately account for extreme-weather disruptions, which are becoming the new normal.

Disaster management in Kashmir still leans heavily on reactive relief rather than proactive mitigation. Emergency relief funds cannot substitute for long-term investments in resilient infrastructure, ecological restoration, and adaptive livelihoods. This approach effectively normalizes vulnerability, as each disaster sets back economic progress by years.

The absence of a comprehensive urban flood-management strategy is especially glaring. Cities like Srinagar need a scientific floodplain zoning policy, early-warning systems integrated with meteorological data, and a serious crackdown on unregulated construction. A disaster-prone region cannot afford fragmented governance.

Building Economic and Climate Resilience

The floods should serve as a pivot point to rethink Kashmir’s economic development model through a climate-adaptive lens. Several strategies stand out:

1. Reimagining Urban Planning:

Floodplain zoning, drainage mapping, and wetland restoration must become core pillars of city planning. Smart City projects should prioritize underground stormwater systems, embankment strengthening, and flood shelters rather than surface beautification. Integrating hydrology experts into urban policy teams is essential.

2. Investment in Early-Warning and Preparedness:

A network of real-time rainfall and river-level monitoring stations, combined with robust communication systems, can save lives and property. Integration of AI models can also help in mitigating the risks. Preparedness drills and community-based response training should become routine.

3. Climate-Resilient Agriculture and Livelihood Diversification:

Introducing flood-tolerant crops, crop insurance, and agro-forestry can buffer rural incomes. Promoting small-scale processing industries and e-commerce for handicrafts reduces dependence on climate-vulnerable sectors.

4. Integrated Tourism Strategy:

Tourism infrastructure should be rebuilt with disaster resilience in mind. Promoting eco-tourism, off-season travel, and diversified experiences can cushion the industry from sudden shocks.

5. Financial Mechanisms for Recovery:

Kashmir’s banking and cooperative sectors must be incentivized to extend credit for reconstruction. Microfinance and low-interest loans tied to disaster recovery can accelerate economic revival.

6. Institutional Reforms:

The region needs a single, empowered climate resilience authority to coordinate between departments. Fragmented responsibilities between municipal bodies, irrigation departments, and disaster management agencies undermine effectiveness.

Turning Crisis into Opportunity

Every disaster brings an opportunity to rethink development paradigms. The recurring floods in Kashmir are a signal that the valley’s economy cannot be built on fragile foundations. Climate volatility is no longer a future threat; it is the lived reality shaping livelihoods and growth prospects today.

Instead of viewing floods as isolated crises, policymakers must recognize them as systemic economic shocks. The post-disaster reconstruction phase offers a chance to redesign Kashmir’s growth strategy: embedding resilience into every road, bridge, orchard, and tourism circuit. A region celebrated for its beauty deserves an economic model that protects rather than exploits its natural assets.

Ultimately, Kashmir’s recovery hinges not just on financial aid but on a governance shift—from cosmetic projects to climate-conscious planning, from reactive relief to proactive protection. The rivers will rise again; whether they wash away livelihoods or flow alongside a resilient economy depends entirely on how policymakers act now.

The author is final year economics student at University of Delhi.