By Anuj Kumar Verma | Guest Contributor
Srinagar, Aug 11 (KNO): Some people are shaped by circumstance. Others are shaped by the storms of history. Anuj Kumar Verma belongs to the latter.
To understand why he has spent decades speaking about farmers, rivers, forests, pollution and sustainable development, one must go back to 1947 — to Muzaffarabad, the Kishanganga River and a family forced to abandon its ancestral home. When tribal raiders swept through the region during the upheaval of 1947, thousands of families were displaced.
Among them was Verma’s family. They left behind homes built over generations, fields cultivated with care and a landscape they had known as their own. They carried little with them except their lives, memories and the hope of reaching safety. The journey was difficult.
Families fled through mountain paths, children were carried on shoulders and the elderly were helped along by younger members. For those who survived, displacement was not simply the loss of a house. It was the loss of a landscape, a way of life and a connection to the land. Those memories would eventually shape Verma’s relationship with nature.
Memories that became a mission Verma grew up in Jammu as a quiet and introspective child. His grandmother, Sita Devi, often spoke about the home they had left behind. She remembered the Kishanganga, the fields, the soil after rain and the landscape of Muzaffarabad. But she also remembered the fear and violence that had forced the family to flee. For young Anuj, these were more than stories about a distant past. They became a living connection to a place he had never known himself. His father, Om Prakash Verma, carried a similar history.
Displaced as a child, he spent his early years in refugee camps and grew up with very little. Yet he continued his education, eventually completing his schooling and securing a clerical government job. The family rebuilt its life from almost nothing. His mother, Nirmal Gupta, came from a Jammu Mahajan family and became a government schoolteacher.
Her commitment to education earned her the Best Teacher Award from the then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir, L. K. Jha. Together, his parents built a home around values rather than wealth — hard work, education, dignity, compassion and respect for the land. Those values would later define Verma’s public life. From government service to the fields In 1995, Verma joined government service.
His work brought him into close contact with farmers across Jammu & Kashmir. What he encountered changed his understanding of development. He saw farmers working increasingly hard while struggling to improve their incomes. He saw the excessive and sometimes unsafe use of agrochemicals, declining soil health and agricultural practices that could undermine the very land on which rural livelihoods depended.
For Verma, environmental protection was therefore never an abstract idea. It was about the farmer standing in a field. It was about the quality of the soil beneath his feet, the water he used for irrigation and the food eventually reaching people's tables. He began encouraging farmers to adopt more sustainable practices, reduce dependence on hazardous chemicals and look for ways to obtain greater value from their produce.
His approach was not simply that of an official implementing a government programme. He sought to work with farmers, understand their problems and persuade them that protecting the land could also protect their livelihoods. After three decades of government service, Verma retired as a District Officer in July 2025. But retirement did not end his engagement with the issues he had spent years witnessing.
It gave him more freedom to write about them. When the pen became another tool Over the years, Verma has written extensively on agriculture, environmental degradation and development in Jammu & Kashmir. His articles have addressed pesticide use, sustainable agriculture, dying rivers, disappearing water bodies, single-use plastics, air pollution, deforestation, floods, climate change and the environmental consequences of unchecked development.
His recent writings include From Hazardous Agrochemicals to Sustainable Agriculture — HADP: A Game Change, Can Jammu and Kashmir's Mountains Survive Unchecked Development?, Rivers of Wrath — Repeated Flood Tragedy Demands Urgent Action, Back to Roots or Slow Poison? J&K at Crossroads on Farming Reforms and The Dying Rivers of Jammu & Kashmir: A Crisis of Conscience and Governance.
The subjects may differ, but the central question remains the same: What kind of development does Jammu & Kashmir want — and what are we prepared to sacrifice for it? For Verma, the answer is not to oppose development. Jammu & Kashmir needs roads, infrastructure, jobs, tourism and economic growth. But development that destroys rivers, destabilises mountains, degrades farmland or exhausts natural resources ultimately undermines the very economy it is supposed to strengthen.
That is why his environmental advocacy is rooted in a simple principle: development and ecology cannot be treated as opposing forces. They have to coexist. From the environment to humanity Verma's public work has not been limited to environmental advocacy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served as Organising Secretary of the We The Humans Forum for Nature and Mankind, a public charitable trust. Under the chairmanship of K. Y. S. Manhas, Principal District and Sessions Judge (Retd.), and with the involvement of other members and coordination with district police and administrative authorities, the organisation undertook relief work across Jammu, Samba, Udhampur, Kathua and Doda. Around 300 quintals of ration were distributed among families facing hardship. More than 3,000 COVID hygiene kits were provided, alongside awareness camps, blankets and sewing machines intended to support vulnerable women with livelihood opportunities.
The experience reinforced another belief: environmental and social concerns cannot be separated from human welfare. A polluted river affects the person who depends on it. Degraded soil affects the farmer. Unsafe food affects the consumer. Climate-driven floods affect families living along vulnerable riverbanks. Environmental damage is therefore not merely an ecological problem. It is a social and economic one.
A region at a crossroads Today, Jammu & Kashmir stands at an important crossroads. Its mountains are under growing pressure from construction. Rivers face pollution, encroachment and extraction. Agricultural land is increasingly exposed to chemical-intensive practices. Plastic waste is becoming harder to contain. Extreme weather events are reminding communities that nature cannot simply be pushed aside.
The challenge is not whether Jammu & Kashmir should develop. The challenge is how it develops. The story of Anuj Kumar Verma is, in many ways, a story about that question. A family that once lost its homeland to violence gave its next generation a deep appreciation for the meaning of land. A boy who grew up listening to stories about lost fields eventually spent his working life helping farmers protect theirs. A government officer became a writer.
And a personal history of displacement evolved into a broader concern for the landscapes that sustain millions of people. Perhaps that is why his environmental advocacy carries a particular emotional force. He knows what it means to lose a landscape. And he has spent much of his life arguing that the people who still have theirs should not destroy it. Jammu & Kashmir must grow. It must build, modernise and create opportunities for its people. But progress should not come at the cost of the mountains, rivers, forests, farms and biodiversity that make the region what it is.
The real measure of development is not simply how much concrete we pour, how many roads we build or how quickly cities expand. It is whether, decades from now, there will still be clean rivers to drink from, fertile soil to cultivate, forests to protect and mountains that can withstand the pressure we place upon them. For Verma, that is not merely an environmental question. It is a question of conscience.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Kashmir News Observer (KNO). KNO does not endorse or take responsibility for the opinions, claims or assertions expressed herein.