Budgam's Story Of Power Without Progress

When people outside Kashmir hear the name Budgam, they imagine a place of privilege and influence.

The district is home to former MLAs, the current MP of Srinagar, and the influential Agas, whose sway extends across political lines. Budgam carries the aura of prestige, a name tied to both mainstream and separatist politics.

By reputation, it should be a center of progress. Yet anyone who travels beyond Humhama, past the airport road, steps into another world, one that looks like it has been frozen for centuries.

Budgam is both a district and a town, yet calling it a district often feels misleading. The villages around it have developed faster than its very heart. A few concrete complexes have cropped up in recent years, giving an illusion of modernization, but these are masks.

Scratch beneath the surface and the picture is bleak. Even the politicians and clerics who belong here have failed to bring change to their own doorstep.

The story begins with the basics. Water, the most essential element of life, is a daily crisis.

For decades, residents of Budgam have been drinking water that is muddy, untreated, and dangerous. A filtration plant was promised, but never delivered.

The much-publicized Sukhnag Water Project raised hopes but never crossed from paperwork to pipes. Tender notices came and went, meetings were held, promises made. The taps still run brown.

Families spend on purifiers that burn out, appliances that corrode, and medicines for stomach ailments that follow.

This is slow poisoning, tolerated in silence.

Beyond water, the condition of roads makes even small journeys a struggle.

The district hospital is overstretched, and while a new facility has been sanctioned, its construction site lies miles from the town center. Getting approvals for it took years of lobbying and endless rounds of bureaucratic offices.

The half-kilometer stretch between the old bus stand and the new one takes half an hour in winter, when slush and traffic make movement exhausting.

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