Snowfall, a natural phenomenon, can occur any time by the will of God, as it happened this year more than a month before the scheduled time of winter. With early snow came lot of miseries as it caught the people unawares and unprepared.
It was a coincidence that the snowfall occured simultaneously with the Durbar Move.
As bureaucrats, politicians and elite move with the Durbar to warmer climes of Jammu to escape vagaries of Kashmir winter, we mortals have been left behind to fight the chill and miseries on our own.
Being the precious resource of Kashmir usually people over here in Kashmir wait eagerly for the first snow and greet each other with good wishes for winter season. But this year it came unannounced and at a time when people had yet to stock for long haul and were in the midst of apple season.
Being the inseparable part of every winter , the snow is not only the decorative part of Kashmir but has a very crucial role to feed sources for many irrigation canals besides getting percolated into the ground and gets stored as an underground water body which has also it’s great importance.
So the snow has a great significance and importance both from touristic point of view and agricultural point of view. However it’s timely occurrence is very beneficial for either of the said sectors in Kashmir.
Moreover the apple harvest is still under progress. Only a few small growers have concluded the harvesting. Usually the growers conclude harvesting process towards the end of November and are still busy packing their crops to despatch them off to various big fruit markets outside Kashmir.
Moreover government used to announce winter vacation before the first snowfall usually in the month of December.
However this time the children will be hard hit as movement will be hazardous and schools are not equipped with heating facilities. The exams which according to the yearly calendar of education department (DSEK) were scheduled to be held in the month of October but due to unknown reasons most of the students are yet to appear in exams due to deferment in the schedule by authorities. Perhaps due to this long delay and very cold weather the children would not be comfortable in the examination centres too.
Right we cant help as this is a natural phenomena. But to remain prepared to face the challenges has to be done by authorities. So authorities later than never need to facilitate the people with all possible arrangements like availability of road clearing machines, heating arrangements for students in examination halls, restoration of power supply were it would get affected and necessary advisories for people in order to minimise damage.
Azad Hussain Ganaie
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