Kashmir’s Price-Gouging Shame

In Kashmir, hardship does not arrive unannounced; it is scheduled. With clockwork cruelty, every festival and religious occasion brings not relief or compassion, but an assault on the common man’s kitchen. As the holy month progresses—a time meant for restraint, empathy, and shared sacrifice—the prices of essentials, especially vegetables and fruits, skyrocket without logic, justification, or shame.
What should be a season of humility has been converted into a marketplace of greed. Tomatoes turn into luxury items, fruits become display pieces for the affluent, and the poor are left to count coins and compromise meals. This is not inflation driven by supply shocks or transport bottlenecks; this is naked profiteering, enabled by silence and rewarded by impunity.
Adding insult to injury is the appalling conduct of many vendors. Instead of accountability, there is arrogance. Instead of explanation, there is hostility. Questions are met with sneers; complaints with indifference. The consumer is treated not as a citizen with rights, but as a captive forced to pay ransom for survival.
Where, then, is the state? Where is the much-touted “machinery” that awakens only for ceremonies and press notes? As usual, it is missing in action—either uninterested or unwilling to confront the cartels that bleed households dry. Raids are rare, price lists are ignored, and enforcement is a myth. When governance retreats, greed advances.
This recurring injustice exposes a deeper rot: a moral collapse where sacred months are exploited, not honored; where hunger is monetized; where faith becomes a sales season. It also exposes an administrative failure so chronic that it now feels deliberate. Regulation is not charity—it is duty. And dereliction of duty, repeated year after year, is complicity.
Kashmir deserves better than this ritualized exploitation. The poor should not have to fast because vegetables are priced out of reach. Devotion should not be taxed. If the state cannot protect citizens at their most vulnerable moments, then what purpose does it serve?
Enough sermons, enough silence. Enforce price controls. Penalize hoarders. Hold vendors accountable. Or admit, plainly, that in today’s Kashmir, festivals are for profiteers—and piety is paid for by the poor.