Srinagar, May 19 -- In my four decades of public life, I have rarely seen such widespread destruction from a single weather event. This was not just a storm. It was a disaster. Thousands of families in the Valley watched, powerless, as years of hard work vanished in a matter of minutes. Tin roofs flew like paper, electric poles collapsed, and entire trees, heavy with promise, lay broken in the mud.

From the Karewa belt of Pulwama to the hill slopes of Tangmarg, the destruction is uniform. Apple nurseries, carefully nurtured over years, are gone. In Baramulla and Budgam, entire orchards have been reduced to tangled wreckage. These are not isolated losses, they represent an economic collapse for tens of thousands of growers who depend sole...