NEW DELHI: The new maxim in Delhi’s fruit market is an apple a day keeps the terrorist away. Informed sources claimed that big traders, operating from the city, are asking apple growers of the Kashmir Valley to pressure locals to keep away from protests because of harvesting season.
However, separatists, flush with funds from Pakistan, are paying the apple growers. Says a security agency official, “With huge amounts of funding from across the border, radicals are not bothered about losses in business for apple farmers.
To some extent, they are even ready to compensate apple growers for their loss in condition to participate in the agitation.” All top apple traders, who control the fruit business of Kashmir, are based in Delhi’s Azadpur mandi. “Efforts are on to buy peace in the Valley, at least for the time being. Big traders are pursuing agitators to make way for peace,” said a source. Security agencies hope what pellet guns could not achieve in Kashmir, apples will.
In August, ripe apples are plucked from orchards in the Valley and packed to be transported to all parts of the country and abroad. The last 49 days of unrest in Kashmir have not allowed the fruit to be trucked out. The loss to farmers so far is approximately Rs 1,000 crore.
The annual apple business in the Valley amounts to nearly Rs 5,000 crore. According to an estimate, this year apple production in the state was recorded at nearly 25 lakh metric tonnes, of which parts of the north and south of the Valley produced 22 lakh metric tonnes.
Apple growers in Kashmir’s Sopore, Pulwama and Shopian of south Kashmir, which is famous for its early varieties of apples with a lower shelf life, have not been able to harvest and transport their produce. With minimum cold storage facilities in Kashmir, the perishable fruit will rot soon.
Not only apples, even growers of walnuts in the Valley are also equally concerned about their crop. Places like Tangdhar and Kupwara, where top quality of walnuts are grown, have not been able to transport it due to complete lockdown of the Jammu-Srinagar highway.
But security forces are apprehensive that separatists, responsible for orchestrating widespread protests in Valley, will not abandon the poisoned fruit of their labour.