Srinagar, July 10 -- Mud walls, tin roofs, and a wire fence encircled the entire settlement. It looked less like a village and more like a low-security prison.

We pulled over and walked uphill. The moment we entered, something felt wrong.

This was not just poverty. It was abandonment. The fencing was real. Barbed wire cut across the landscape. There was no road into the village, no signs of governance, and no basic facilities.

What startled me most was not just what was missing, but what I was told.

"These fences," said Akram Nengroo, one of the elders, "are not to protect us. They're to contain us."

The 17 families living in Nengroo Basti had not migrated there on their own. They were moved in by the government in 2007 after a lands...