Exploring how displacement, informal settlements, and social exclusion threaten human dignity amid Kashmir’s rapid urban growth
Migration patterns in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) reflects a clear trend: increasing rural to urban movement driven by economic necessity. Census data indicates that rural-urban migration grew significantly between 1971 and 2011, with Srinagar and Jammu recording the highest influx. In fact, Srinagar emerged as the top district in the Kashmir division for inter-state migrants in 2011, followed by Anantnag and Baramulla. Field researchers and regional studies attribute economic factors such as higher daily wages and employment in informal sectors as key drivers. A 2019 survey confirms that work and employment remain dominant motives for male internal migrants in the region. Those migrating from districts like Kupwara, Shopian, Ganderbal, and Pulwama commonly move to cities seeking construction, transport, or service-sector work.
Informal settlements proliferate on the city outskirts. Although exact numbers remain scarce, urbanisation studies confirm Kashmir’s urban population rose from approximately 10 per cent in 1911 to nearly 28 per cent in 2011, with especially sharp growth in Srinagar district, where 98 per cent of the district’s population was classified as urban in 2011.
Real-life clusters of unplanned housing appear in areas such as Baghi e Mehtab (a rapidly expanding suburb of Srinagar) and Narwal near Jammu. Migrants working in construction or small trade tend to live in makeshift quarters built without formal land rights or civic amenities. Research on similar urban contexts suggests such settlements function as “waiting rooms” for arriving migrant families, ready to endure insecure tenancy and exclusion.
Public welfare systems often overlook internal migrants. The absence of formal tenancy or domicile renders them ineligible for housing schemes or ration cards. Policy documents and migration research reinforce that internal migrants remain largely invisible in administrative planning, unserved by government housing efforts unless linked to defined relief schemes. Education for migrant children remains volatile. Census and surveys reveal that many such children face dropout risks due to relocation and documentation barriers. The “moved with household” category accounts for over 15 per cent of migration in the Kashmir Valley, showing a pattern of entire families shifting but not integrating into formal urban systems.
There is an ethical issue because migrant workers are needed for quick urban growth projects such as making cities more beautiful, building roads, and developing tourism. But when cities plan their infrastructure, they often do not consider the housing needs of migrants. The Srinagar Smart City projects and large-scale business expansions do not often help workers who live in unstable settlements. When migrants stay stateless in their own region, silent exclusion turns into displacement.
A mason from a village in Shopian or Kupwara could work in Srinagar for years, getting paid and helping to build public works, but they would never be able to access housing, healthcare, or urban welfare benefits because they lack formal proof of residence. Cities that benefit from migrant workers must do more than just utilise their labour; they must also see them as residents who deserve protection under the law. Housing policy needs to address legal ownership in informal settlements. Migrant children must be able to attend public schools. Welfare programmes must be flexible enough to assist internal migrants. If not, internal migration turns into a long-term move that appears to be an opportunity. Building cities without including everyone perpetuates inequality. The poor in rural areas support city economies, but they cannot become permanent members of the city. When shelter is unstable and survival depends on mobility, migration becomes long-term displacement.
When cities grow on the backs of those who build them but do not aid them, it undermines human dignity. Institutional integrity means that migrants should be welcomed into the public fold. It is still right and necessary to ensure that migrant communities have safe housing, legal recognition, and social support. Without such policies, people will continue migrating to cities in Jammu and Kashmir, living in secrecy and for long periods while seeking shelter.
People have to make choices that cannot be reversed when times are tough. In places like Jammu and Kashmir, people do not move solely out of preference. It is driven by necessity—when crops fail, landholdings diminish, politics become unstable, or rural infrastructure collapses. Families that once earned a living through farming, working in orchards, or raising animals now work in cities in low-paying jobs with little security and dignity.
Moving from land-based livelihoods to informal urban work is not just an economic shift; it also disrupts cultural continuity and alters identity without preparation or recognition. Communities in places like Shopian and Kulgam have long relied on apple and walnut farming to survive. These jobs are increasingly unreliable due to changing weather, unstable markets, and post-conflict challenges. Many young men leave their homes to work in Srinagar, Jammu, or even Delhi as manual labourers, vendors, or security guards. Over time, their names disappear from village land records. Their children grow up in rented homes, far from their family’s language, oral traditions, and traditional holidays.
This slow but significant break in the social fabric results in families being split or caught in the daily grind for money, leading to the loss of village-based cultural practices such as collective harvesting, local shrines, and seasonal rituals. In areas like Bemina or Zoonimar on Srinagar’s outskirts, migrant communities have formed that are disconnected from local mohalla committees, mosques, or cultural events. Many migrant families avoid participation due to fear, shame, or feeling excluded. Over time, their identity diminishes; they contribute economically but remain socially invisible.
This issue is seldom addressed in policy discussions in Jammu and Kashmir. Migration is often viewed as a labour market trend rather than a cultural or psychological disruption. Government reports may mention employment patterns, but they rarely acknowledge that a man selling fruit in Lal Chowk today may have once sung folk ballads in his home village, now forgotten by his children who have never returned. Displacement is measured by land loss or refugee status, not by the loss of dialects, oral histories, or family bonds.
This separation is even more pronounced in families with second-generation migrants. Children raised in rented homes on city edges often find it difficult to attend school regularly. Their parents work in low-paid jobs that cannot cover schooling costs or provide the documents needed to prove residence. Even when they access education, these children struggle to make friends or are treated as outsiders. They do not belong to any village, nor do they fully integrate into the city. They are effectively homeless in both worlds.
Restoring this dislocation is challenging. Returning to the village often offers little hope; land may have been sold, ancestral homes fallen into disrepair, or the community may have moved on. Migrants trying to go back may feel they no longer belong, as the land that once symbolised identity and pride now feels alien.
Cities benefit from this labour. Migrants clean streets, build infrastructure, and sustain the service economy. Yet they remain absent from public memory and urban planning. They are overlooked in municipal welfare schemes, cultural initiatives, and housing allocations. Their presence is tolerated but not acknowledged. Their histories are unrecorded.
The consequences extend beyond individual hardship. When migration severs the link between past and present, society loses depth. A culture that forgets its rural lifeways, dialects, communal values, and seasonal rhythms becomes fragile and superficial. Identity reduced solely to economic function lacks continuity. A community disconnected from its roots becomes easier to silence and harder to empower.
Any serious policy on migration and urban planning must recognise that displacement involves more than physical relocation. It encompasses loss of memory, ritual, and meaning. Economic survival gained at the expense of cultural erasure is not development—it is dispossession. Without policies that protect rural livelihoods, preserve cultural practices, and integrate migrant families into urban civic life, migration will continue to produce invisible losses that weaken individuals and society alike. The silence surrounding this rupture must end. Institutions must acknowledge that belonging economically without social inclusion is a burden too many carry.
Urban expansion in Kashmir has accelerated over the past two decades. Projects framed as development—such as the Srinagar Smart City initiative and tourism-related infrastructure—depend heavily on manual and semi-skilled labour from within Jammu and Kashmir. Internal migrants from districts such as Anantnag, Kupwara, Reasi, Kishtwar, and Poonch continue to provide the workforce required for road construction, hotel development, street vending, and municipal maintenance. Yet, their living conditions are often ignored or deliberately overlooked in urban planning.
Most of these workers arrive with no institutional support. After working hours, they return to makeshift settlements on vacant municipal or forest land, lacking drainage, water supply, and electricity. In Srinagar, informal colonies have grown on the outskirts of areas like Bemina, Batmaloo, and Zakura. In Jammu, similar conditions prevail in places like Narwal, Qasim Nagar, and Channi Rama. These sites, mainly inhabited by construction workers, loaders, and street vendors, function as housing only in a technical sense. They offer no security of tenure, no sewage systems, and no waste disposal facilities. Monsoon rains flood these dwellings, and in winter, freezing temperatures make them uninhabitable.
Despite contributing daily to urban development, these migrants remain unprotected by any housing policy. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, intended to provide housing for the urban poor, often excludes them due to the lack of proof of residence, a permanent address, or local identification. Migrants working in Srinagar for over a decade often find themselves without access to ration cards, voter registration, or municipal documentation. Their invisibility allows authorities to exclude them from sanitation schemes, health camps, and emergency welfare programmes.
Government projects frequently fail to account for these exclusions. Labour is contracted cheaply, often without written agreements or insurance. In 2022, the construction of the Jehangir Chowk-Rambagh flyover employed workers from South Kashmir, yet no temporary labour housing was arranged. Workers stayed in rented tin sheds along canal banks and travelled over two kilometres daily to the worksite. Sanitation was self-managed, and waste accumulated around their shelters. Such conditions are viewed as collateral to development, not as policy concerns.
The Smart City Mission, launched with promises of modernising infrastructure, mainly focuses on roads, transport, and beautification. However, informal labour settlements within Srinagar remain unrecognised in the master plan. Displacement without compensation has occurred in areas like Dalgate and Nowpora, where hawkers and vendors were removed to make way for footpaths and heritage walls. Many displaced individuals were from lower-income districts and migrated after losing agricultural viability in their home regions. Relocations and vending permits are often processed slowly or ignored altogether.
Urban expansion becomes exploitative when it consumes labour without protecting those who work. Public toilets built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan are often locked near migrant settlements or operate only for nearby commercial shops. Healthcare outreach rarely includes these populations, who are treated as temporary or undesirable. In reality, their contribution is vital—they maintain municipal cleanliness, provide cheap transport, supply retail goods, and undertake unskilled construction. Without them, cities would slow down. Despite this, their social needs remain unmet.
The core contradiction lies in the very structure of development. When urban planning prioritises visual transformation—such as clean streets, widened roads, and aesthetic facades—it treats workers as disposable instruments rather than citizens. Development that neglects labour welfare creates a hierarchy where the product of work is celebrated, but the worker is excluded from its benefits.
Temporary shelters, rising rents, and the absence of rental regulation keep migrant families in a constant state of vulnerability. Many avoid reporting exploitation or abuse out of fear of eviction or job loss. They remain politically voiceless, often unable to vote in the constituencies where they live and work. As a result, they lack representation in decisions that directly impact their lives.
Urban expansion in Kashmir cannot be measured solely by kilometres of roads or square feet of commercial space. It must also be evaluated by the living conditions of those who make it possible. Without secure housing, basic sanitation, and legal protections for migrant workers, development remains extractive rather than transformative. Policies need to recognise those who sustain urban life and move beyond superficial symbols. Cities cannot grow with dignity if they continue to erode the dignity of those who build them.
Development pursued without moral restraint risks deepening existing inequalities. In conflict-sensitive regions like Jammu and Kashmir, where displacement is already embedded in collective memory, unchecked urban growth carries a heavy price. Infrastructure projects, city beautification, and commercial expansion may create a facade of progress, but beneath lies a silent history of marginalisation, exclusion, and erasure.
Decades of conflict have already caused multiple waves of displacement. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s, relocations due to armed operations, land re-zoning around military installations, and flood-induced displacements in 2014 have all shaped perceptions of space and belonging. Each event has left behind populations who lost homes, ancestral land, and a sense of permanence.
In such a region, the ethics of further displacement demand careful scrutiny. Urban expansion often involves demolitions, evictions, and land reappropriation of land previously occupied by informal workers or long-settled low-income families. In 2022, parts of Dal Lake’s periphery saw large-scale removal of houseboats, vending stalls, and informal homes as part of lake conservation and smart city initiatives. The official narrative cited ecological balance and heritage restoration, but many of those displaced were descendants of earlier land acquisition or conflict. Repetition of displacement, without long-term rehabilitation, perpetuates cycles of instability and deepens social mistrust.
Growth that depends on erasing the most vulnerable is inherently unjust. When land is cleared for hotels or shopping complexes and those who laboured to build them are denied housing nearby, the benefits of progress are skewed. Migrants from districts such as Doda, Rajouri, or Pulwama, who arrive in Srinagar or Jammu seeking work, often find shelter in informal clusters unprotected by law. These families are evicted when land is required for road widening or beautification, with no alternative accommodation offered. Their displacement often escapes media attention because it is gradual, unregistered, and considered acceptable collateral.
A society committed to fairness cannot allow its cities to grow on foundations of exclusion. Displacement in Kashmir is not merely a matter of relocation; it carries historical, emotional, and psychological weight. Many families have already endured multiple disruptions due to political or environmental upheavals. Another removal—this time in the name of development—adds to a sense of dispossession that policy fails to address.
The moral question is not whether development should continue but whether it can do so without neglecting those it displaces. Economic growth without parallel investment in housing, welfare, and inclusion reduces progress to mere numbers. In Kashmir, where space is contested and identity fragile, planning must recognise the histories of those who inhabit urban and semi-urban spaces. Progress measured only in road length or permits cannot replace the need for stability, community, and rootedness.
Governments often promise rehabilitation, but implementation remains uneven. Displaced populations are frequently moved to the city’s outskirts, where access to transportation, healthcare, and education is limited. Such relocations weaken the fragile links between migrant families and the urban centres they support. Without meaningful support, these households risk becoming permanently marginalised, unable to return to their villages or integrate fully into the expanding cities.
A society that neglects the ethics of inclusion cannot sustain long-term social cohesion. Infrastructure alone cannot guarantee peace or justice. For development to be credible, it must prioritise those who have already lost too much. Ignoring the recurring displacement of vulnerable groups undermines the moral foundation of progress and threatens the very identity of the city and society. Inclusion, not erasure, must be the guiding principle. Otherwise, growth remains a project for the few, built on the silence of many.
Dr Rashid Manzoor Bhat
rs*****@***il.com