South Kashmir’s Wahibugh’s village has been fighting for survival as its main rivulet has been turning to dust. Villagers say that ground-water is gone, and trees are dying. While over 330 vehicles dredging the river have been seized for illegal mining, the environmental time bomb is ticking, threatening survival and foreboding a crises.
It starts quietly. No thunder. No warning. Just the low, mechanical hum of machines moving across the creek bed like vultures circling a fallen body.
In Wahibugh, a quiet village nestled in the Pulwama district of South Kashmir, the soundscape has shifted. The soothing calls of nightjars and the whisper of the breeze through chinar leaves have been replaced.
Now, it’s the groan of excavators—JCBs—echoing through the darkened hours of the night.
Every night, they come. Relentless. Without fear. Without secrecy. The machines march toward the Rumshi Rivulet—deliberate, tireless—digging into her fragile bed.
Crushed gravel is scooped up, boulders are torn apart—tractor by tractor, tipper by tipper, night after night. Each evening, the earth, the water, the life itself is slowly, steadily plundered.
The rivulet does not scream. But each morning, she withdraws a little more.
The water slips further into herself. Her banks collapse. Her voice weakens. Her memory fades. There’s a quiet violence to it—a haunting kind of death that happens not with a bang, but with a whisper.
Rumshi is not just a rivulet to the people of Wahibugh. She is rhythm. She is identity. She is breath. She was the very lifeblood of the village, watering the roots of centuries-old apple orchards, cooling the dust of summer roads, and shimmering like silver at twilight.
She told the time. She marked the seasons. Her quiet murmur was the heartbeat of life in Wahibugh.
But that was before.
Before the machines arrived with their insatiable appetite for stone. Before the rivulet became a quarry. Before silence took on a new, heavier meaning, suffocating the land beneath its weight.
The orchards, once proud and fertile, now stand in distress. Trees lean like old men left too long in the sun, their trunks fragile, their roots exposed.
Fruit hangs small and sour, unwilling to ripen, unwilling to bear. The earth beneath them is cracked and uncertain, thirsting for something it can no longer reach.
“These trees were our legacy,” says Mohammad Ayoub, a fruit grower whose family has lived off this land for generations. “Some trees were worth lakhs. They were planted by my grandfather. Now they dry up, fall, and we lose them every season.”
He says it quietly, almost reverently, as if the words themselves might mourn. This isn’t just loss. It’s grief. A grief too deep for tears.
The villagers know what’s happening. They watch the rivulet dig into herself, deeper and deeper, night after night. With every truckload of crushed gravel and boulders taken away, the rivulet loses something she cannot recover.
“It’s not just the land,” says Altaf Ahmad, another grower. “It’s the timing. Our crops are confused. The water doesn’t come when it should. The seasons are out of rhythm.”
[Photo: Google Photos/Pervez.]
Everything is offbeat, out of sync. The village, like the river, seems dazed, caught in a kind of suspended animation, waiting for something that may never return.
And now, a deeper, more insidious danger lurks: groundwater depletion.
When riverbeds are dug beyond their natural depth, the delicate system that allows rainwater to recharge the groundwater breaks. The river can no longer seep gently into the earth. Rain no longer lingers—it runs off in haste, slipping away from the land that needs it.
The soil, instead of drinking it in, repels it. Roots thirst, and springs dry up. What was once a network of lifeblood beneath the earth now resembles a wound—dry, barren, and unhealable.
According to a 2023 study by the Central Ground Water Board, over-extraction and unscientific excavation of rivulet beds in South Kashmir have disrupted the aquifer recharge systems. Wahibugh, it turns out, falls under a critical zone. The report warns that without immediate curbs, the groundwater table could become non-viable within five years.
“The land is thirsty, and it stays thirsty,” says Ghulam Rasool, a retired schoolteacher. “Even after rain, the moisture doesn’t last. It’s like the soil has forgotten how to hold water.”
Across Wahibugh, small streams that once branched from Rumshi have vanished. These brooks—once teeming with life—were the capillaries of the valley, breathing life into every corner. Now, they are dry scars that run across fields where nothing grows but dust.
“We had a stream that ran by our field,” says Bilal Ahmad, a young farmer. “It watered our pears and plums. Now it’s just dust. The illegal mining has cut the veins of this land.”
In 2023, Greater Kashmir reported that illegal mining had caused the loss of over 70 percent of minor tributaries connected to the Rumshi in Pulwama district alone. These natural feeders, once sustaining agriculture in multiple villages, have disappeared due to bed degradation and unregulated dredging.
The consequences are unfolding like a slow-motion disaster.
Fish have vanished. Birds that once sang above the rivulet now fly elsewhere, leaving behind only emptiness. Mosquitoes rise from stagnant pools of water. Waterborne diseases loom in the air, though no epidemic has struck yet. The villagers whisper fears of dengue, malaria, and skin rashes—yet there’s nothing they can do but wait.
Even the weather seems to resist the village. Rains come harder, faster—but mean less. Floods are feared, but droughts hit harder. The rivulet, no longer buffered by her own natural bed, swings between fury and absence.
[Photo: Google Photos/Aadil Nabie.]
“It’s a slow disaster,” says Ayoub. “Not like a flood or a fire. This is quieter. But it’s killing us.”
The damage is not only ecological. It is deeply economic. Orchard output has dropped sharply. Apple sizes are shrinking, and yields are plummeting. Market buyers have turned away, unwilling to invest in produce that no longer meets the standards. And in a region where fruit farming is a lifeline, this downturn bleeds into every home, every heart.
“We can’t invest in new saplings,” says Bilal. “We don’t know if they’ll survive.”
Young people are leaving. What was once a proud farming village is now hollowing out. Men seek labor in Srinagar, Anantnag, Delhi—far from their homes, far from their heritage. They leave behind ageing parents and thirsty fields.
The miners? They come from elsewhere. Often backed by powerful lobbies, shielded by silence and loopholes. Some operations have licenses, but overstep their limits. Others operate without any clearance at all. It’s a murky game—one of money, politics, and indifference.
Complaints are filed. Occasionally, a team visits. Photos are taken. Reports are written. But by then, the JCBs have vanished—only to return the next night.
[Photo: Google Photos/Junaid Malik.]
In response, Pulwama’s District Mineral Office (DMO) reported in 2024 that over 333 vehicles involved in illegal mining had been seized between April and November. Fines worth ₹91.43 lakh were collected, and several FIRs were lodged. Yet, locals confirm that the mining continues—just better hidden now.
Wahibugh isn’t asking for miracles. The villagers are practical. They understand that roads must be built, homes constructed. But they ask: must it cost them their rivulet?
Can mining not be limited, regulated, made sustainable? Can there not be boundaries respected, laws enforced?
Can someone, anyone, listen?
The story of Wahibugh is not an isolated tale. Across Kashmir—and India—rivulets are being mined beyond repair. The hunger for gravel is unrelenting. But in places like Wahibugh, the cost is too high.
Rumshi is not just water. She is memory. Children once played in her shallows. Women gathered at her banks to chat, to wash, to feel connected. Men fished. Elders sat under willows, sipping noon chai.
Now, children stay away. The rivulet is too deep, too fast, too dangerous. There are no fish. The willows fall in silence.
What Wahibugh is witnessing is not just environmental degradation. It is cultural erasure. When rivulets are destroyed, communities unravel. Their rhythms, their rituals, their resilience—everything shifts.
And yet, the people hope. They speak of the old days, not with bitterness, but longing. They believe it’s not too late.
“We still believe the rivulet can come back,” says Rasool. “If we stop now. If we protect her.”
It begins with enforcement. With political will. With courage. The law must speak louder than the machines. Agencies must act before it’s too late. Local voices must be heard—not dismissed.
Because rivulets, once broken, do not easily mend.
In Wahibugh, the silence grows louder. It is a silence made of questions.
Will the next generation know this rivulet ? Will they taste her water? Will they believe she once sang?
The people of Wahibugh are waiting. Not for aid. Not for sympathy. But for justice. For someone, somewhere, to say: Enough.
Before the rivulet forgets how to return.
Gowher Majeed Bhat is a creative writer and educator based in Kashmir. He writes on society, education, and culture.
