Kashmir’s horticulture sector has got a big boost as a parcel train containing 24 tons of cherry left Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra Railway Station for Mumbai on Saturday. The train, which will reach Mumbai’s Bandra station within 30 hours, was earlier scheduled for June 3 but was advanced to facilitate two more indents for loading of cherries, one from station and another from Jammu station, in the coming days. The development has rightly been described as ‘historic’ by the railway authorities. Transportation has all along been a big challenge that Kashmir fruit growers have been facing historically. The fragility of Srinagar-Jammu highway has always been a nightmare for the fruit growers as due to landslides and bad weather, it would get closed with fruit-laden trucks getting stuck for hours and days together. Fruit like cherry have very short shelf-life and thus it would rot on way to outside markets due to blockades. Though, of late, a lot of work has been done on this highway and it has been upgraded laying fresh tunnels thus reducing the travel time but there still are some bad patches which challenge both commuters are well as transportation of fruit. By starting the parcel train from Katra and Jammu, the railway authorities have further shortened the transportation process as earlier the cherry growers would carry the cherry to Amritsar and from there it would go to other Mandis of the country in parcel trains.
Though a very highly appreciable step, the fruit growers are eagerly waiting for the day when instead of Katra and Jammu, such parcel trains would leave from different railway stations of the Valley and reach the different markets of the country well in time and without any damage. That would be the game changer. Horticulture is one of the most important sectors in Kashmir’s economy. Nearly 7 lakh families are directly or indirectly engaged in horticulture, and besides other fruit, Kashmir produces over 20 lakh metric tons of apples annually. Direct parcel trains from Srinagar to other parts of the country will revolutionize the horticulture sector and thus give a great push to overall economy of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir. Though Prime Minister was to inaugurate the direct train service from Katra in Jammu to Srinagar early this month but the function was put on hold due to inclement weather. People of Kashmir are still waiting for this to happen, however, as of today, there is no word from the railway authorities. The union government need to prioritize the issue and speed up the process of connecting Kashmir with rest of the country through railways.
