By Tawheed Parvaiz Bhat

I still remember when solving a math problem felt like solving a mystery. Numbers had feel, equations made sense, and every answer brought a small thrill.

In those days, classrooms in Kashmir were alive with curiosity. Students loved competing over geometry puzzles. Teachers filled blackboards with theorems, and parents proudly encouraged their children to take up mathematics. It was a subject of pride.

Today, that energy is fading. In many colleges, mathematics has almost disappeared from classrooms. Enrolment in math courses has dropped to around 1% in degree colleges and below 2% in higher secondary schools.

At Government Degree College Bandipora, only nine students have chosen mathematics in the past two years. One of the largest higher secondary schools in the district has 70 math students out of nearly a thousand. These numbers speak of a growing crisis.

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