Kashmir’s famed carpets ruined in $5bn flood losses

SRINAGAR, India // Caked with mud and soaked in putrid water, Qazi Mohammed Yahya’s ruined handmade carpets and Pashmina shawls reflect Indian Kashmir’s economic devastation from the region’s worst floods in a century.

More than 450 people were killed when the floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains, swept through the Himalayan region this month and into Pakistan, leaving hundreds of villages submerged and tens of thousands of residents homeless.

As the waters recede and the clean up finally begins, business owners, including those selling Indian Kashmir’s most famous exports, are beginning to count their losses – at least $5 billion (Dh18.35bn) by conservative estimates.

“My 35 years of earning is gone,” Mr Yahya said as waterlogged carpets collected from one of his showrooms were unloaded from a lorry.

“The loss is incalculable. Most of my finest carpets are lying elsewhere in the flooded city.”

Carpets and other handicraft businesses have long thrived even as the region has endured an insurgency against Indian rule in favour of independence or merger with Pakistan.

But scores of carpet showrooms now lie under water after Srinagar’s Dal Lake burst its banks, sending residents fleeing for higher ground. Many of the handlooms have also been destroyed and hundreds of people are out of work.

“It may take one year to recover, it may take 50. It depends on Allah,” Mr Yahya, 55, who travels to Europe, South East Asia and the US every year to sell his carpets.

From carpets and saffron, another famed Kashmir export, to apples, walnuts and gold jewellery, business owners are returning to their flood-wrecked shops to find tonnes of goods gone or destroyed.

“Our most conservative estimate of loss is at least” $5bn, said Ashraf Mir, president of the Federation Chambers of Industries Kashmir.

Srinagar, the commercial hub, was the worst hit, Mr Mir said.

The figures were likely to be higher because most of the Kashmir Valley’s 500,000 traders underinsured their stock.

Mr Mir runs a steel fabrication plant employing 100 people.

“I can’t support my staff under the circumstances,” he said.

Mr Mir said many business owners including farmers lost financial records, making it difficult for them to seek help from banks and other financial institutions.

“Businesses need to rebuild fast for which liberal institutional help is a must,” Mr Mir said. Many business owners were among the tens of thousands who also lost their homes.”

In one of Srinagar’s main and oldest markets, Maharaj Bazar, mounds of ruined dried fruits and other goods line the road as shopkeepers begin the massive clean up. The stench of rotting foodstuff hangs in the air.

“We had stocked to the fullest for the peak of marriage season in Kashmir,” said shopkeeper Mehraj-u-Din, as he loaded sacks of soiled almonds, cashew nuts, saffron and dates onto a lorry to be thrown into the nearby Jhelum river which is finally receding.

“Now everything is gone.”

* Agence France-Presse