Houses Without Hope

Kashmir is building faster than it's thinking. As housing projects rise, the people who might live in them are leaving. Without jobs, a home is just a shell.

- Syed Arsalan Abid

On paper, Kashmir is developing. In reality, it's emptying out.

You don't have to go far to see the change. Construction is everywhere. Residential towers are rising in the outskirts of Srinagar, gated colonies are coming up outside Anantnag, and promotional hoardings promise smart homes in Baramulla.

Developers from Delhi, Punjab, and even Dubai are buying up land and selling visions of modernity. But take a closer look. Many of these structures are finished, or nearly so, and eerily unoccupied.

Glass balconies reflect the sun, but not life. Entire floors are dark. In some places, caretakers live alone in buildings designed for families.

This isn’t progress. It's a disconnect.

What's missing isn't infrastructure. It's people. And what's pulling people away is what this new growth fails to provide: work.

Each year, thousands of Kashmir's most skilled and educated young people leave. Engineers go to Bangalore. Nurses head to the Gulf. MBAs, designers, tech workers, teachers follow the trail of employment across India and beyond. They leave not out of ambition, but out of resignation.

Back home, the job market offers little more than government exams, low-wage private work, and the promise of uncertainty. So they leave, often reluctantly, often for good.

And yet we keep building.