The Labour that Kashmir Refuses

Work is not merely survival - it is dignity, responsibility, and belonging. When people abandon work, they abandon a part of their own soul. It begins with what looks like a small, almost trivial encounter. It took me three days to find four labourers. Not because Kashmir lacks hands, but because Kashmiris have quietly abdicated the responsibility of work. In Awantipora, I visited a cluster of rented quarters where non-Kashmiri workers live. They are strangers to this land, yet they are indispensable to its functioning. Their contractor, an elder among them, negotiated firmly on their behalf. The price was set: eight hundred rupees per day, with lunch, dinner, and nevla. When I asked him how many men lived there, he replied with calm certainty: “Hum 45 bande hai yahan.” Forty-five men, away from home, carrying on their shoulders the labour that we refuse to shoulder ourselves.

When I sat down to do the arithmetic, the picture became stark. Working from March to November, these men collectively earn nearly a crore in one small cluster. Multiply this across hundreds of such clusters across the Valley, and the sum is staggering: crores of rupees leaving Kashmir every year, wealth generated on our soil, yet extracted by those who neither belong nor are invested in its future. The scandal is not that they earn, but that we refuse to work. The more painful question is not how much they take away, but why we have failed to claim what is ours.

The paradox is both economic and moral. We lament unemployment, our youth queue endlessly for government jobs, and every household treats a secure post as the pinnacle of aspiration. Yet fields remain untended, construction sites starve for hands, and homes cannot be built without outsiders. The hands exist, the bodies are willing, but the minds and the culture reject labour. Kashmiris have cultivated an allergy to work, a moral and cultural aversion that has hollowed out the economy and eroded dignity. Work has become shameful unless sanctioned by the state, unless it carries prestige in the form of a government post or a white-collar label. Labour, once the foundation of our survival, is now perceived as a degradation. The economy bleeds, not because others take from us, but because we refuse to assume responsibility for our own sustenance.

This disdain for work is deeply embedded in our culture. Physical labour is seen as menial, degrading, even dishonourable. A Kashmiri would rather idle in grievance than carry bricks or harvest fields. Status anxiety has seeped into our social fabric; we valorize education as a pathway to prestige while treating the sweat of the body with disdain. The mason from Bihar labours with quiet dignity; the Kashmiri youth, equally capable, considers such work beneath him. This cultural pathology has severe consequences: a society where consumption outpaces production, where grievance substitutes for responsibility, and where entitlement masquerades as virtue. The tragedy is not merely economic stagnation, but the erosion of self-respect, a people delegating the most basic functions of survival to outsiders while remaining passive spectators of their own economy.

Decades of conflict have intensified this malady. Conflict has not only scarred bodies but hollowed wills. Subsidies, aid, and compensation created a parallel economy where grievance became a substitute for labour. Politics and administration reinforced entitlement; dependence was normalized, while responsibility became optional. The hand that should work lies idle; the fields, construction sites, and markets depend on the toil of outsiders. Kashmiris have developed a cultivated indolence, a quiet moral collapse that corrodes society from within. This is not a problem of opportunity alone- but a crisis of will, culture, and ethical imagination. Every rupee paid to an outsider is a reflection of our abdication, a testament to the choices we make in refusing to labour.

The arithmetic of this dependency is unforgiving. Forty-five men working nine months at eight hundred rupees per day collectively earn nearly a crore. Across hundreds of such clusters, the total outflow of wages runs into hundreds of crores annually. This is wealth generated by Kashmiris on Kashmiri soil, yet carried away by those who bring nothing but their discipline, their resilience, and their willingness to work. The lesson is sharp: the Bihari worker survives because he knows what we have forgotten- labour is capital, sweat is currency, and dignity is earned through effort, not entitlement. He thrives where we languish, not because of talent or opportunity alone, but because of commitment to responsibility.

Kashmir suffers not only from economic dependence but from a profound cultural and social hollowing. Work has been moralized as lowly, status as sacred, and grievance as substitute for effort. The youth inherit the notion that dignity comes from waiting for the state, not from producing or creating. Idleness is sanctified, entitlement romanticized, and responsibility outsourced. The consequences are visible everywhere: construction projects delayed, fields untended, small-scale businesses struggling for manpower. Outsiders perform the work we scorn, and in doing so, they not only earn wages but inadvertently instruct us in the ethic of responsibility we have abandoned. Every brick laid, every field harvested by them is a quiet indictment of our cultural and moral failure.

Some may blame politics, conflict, or governance failures. They are contributing factors, but they do not absolve a society that refuses to assume responsibility for survival. Kashmiris have internalized a dependency mentality; they expect security, recognition, and reward without exertion. This is not a temporary malaise; but a structural and cultural pathology. The Bihari worker is not extraordinary; he survives because he knows the basic principles of life: work is dignity, effort is capital, and responsibility cannot be outsourced. The absence of this ethic among Kashmiris explains the persistent outflow of wealth and the moral fragility that accompanies economic dependence.

The crisis has deeper social dimensions. Labour is not merely an economic act; it is a cultural practice that produces agency, pride, and resilience. By rejecting work, Kashmiris have weakened these social foundations. Dependency has seeped into identity, creating a generation that measures status in terms of entitlement rather than productivity. The young learn that waiting is noble, complaint is heroic, and labour is demeaning. This inversion of values corrodes community, weakens family structures, and erodes self-respect. The consequence is a society that imports its hands, its effort, and its productivity, while exporting its moral agency. Outsiders work, Kashmiris watch; the Valley earns for others while its own hands remain idle.

Yet the remedy is not external. It cannot come from government schemes, subsidies, or handouts. The solution lies in reclaiming the dignity of labour, in recognizing that work is not humiliation but assertion of agency, that sweat is not shame but the currency of self-respect. Kashmiris must confront their own choices, their own disdain, and their own cultural pathologies. Only by embracing labour can the Valley arrest the economic bleeding, reclaim wealth, and restore moral coherence. Every rupee that leaves Kashmir is not just money lost; it is an indictment of our abdication. Every construction site, every field tilled by outsiders, is a silent lesson in responsibility- a lesson that can either shame us into action or normalize our indolence.

Kashmir’s dependence on migrant labour is a mirror. It reflects not merely the economic dysfunction but the social, cultural, and moral erosion that has quietly unfolded. We lament unemployment, yet we refuse to labour. We demand dignity, yet we scorn work. We seek prosperity, yet we export the wealth that could be ours. Until Kashmiris reclaim work as a source of pride and a measure of responsibility, the Valley will continue to bleed capital, integrity, and agency. The wages of indolence are precise and unforgiving: they are written in every unfinished wall, every untended field, and every hand that refuses to work. To restore Kashmir, we must restore labour - first in our hands, then in our values, and finally in our imagination of what it means to live, earn, and sustain in our own land.

Zahid Sultan, Freelance Researcher, with PhD in Political Science.