How many more young lives before J&K takes water safety seriously?
The tragedy at Harwan’s Dachigam Nalla, where two young boys drowned while bathing, one now battling for life, is not an isolated mishap. It is the latest entry in a grim and predictable pattern that unfolds every summer across Jammu and Kashmir. Each year, as temperatures rise, our rivers, streams and canals silently turn into death traps for the young, while authorities respond with the same ritual statements and routine “cognisance”. Nothing changes on the ground. What happened in Theed is heartbreakingly familiar. Teenagers, seeking respite and recreation, step into an unregulated, unsupervised body of water. There are no clear warning boards, no barricades at dangerous stretches, no lifeguards, no designated safe zones for swimming. When disaster strikes, it is locals and police who rush in, risking their own lives to retrieve bodies or pull out the drowning. We then wait for “further details”, a few days of shock, and then collective amnesia—until the next obituary. This is not fate. It is a governance failure. Dachigam Nalla is not a hidden stream in some uncharted wilderness. It flows along the outskirts of the summer capital, in an area that sees regular foot traffic from locals and tourists alike. If such a tragedy can unfold here without any visible preventive infrastructure, what does it say about safety in remote and less accessible stretches of our rivers and streams? The administration cannot continue to hide behind post-incident legal formalities. FIRs and inquiries do not save lives; foresight and systems do. Where is the comprehensive water-safety policy for J&K? Where is the mapping of high-risk spots, the mandatory installation of danger signs in local languages, the fencing of hazardous stretches, the deployment of trained rescue teams during peak summer, and the integration of basic water-safety education into school curricula? Parents and people at large, too, cannot absolve themselves. Allowing unsupervised children to venture into deep or fast-flowing waters is an invitation to disaster. But the burden of blame cannot be shifted onto grieving families while the UT shrugs off its duty to create safe public spaces and regulated recreational options. The Harwan incident must be treated as a turning point, not another statistic. The government must immediately order a time-bound audit of all major water bodies across J&K, publicly notify high-risk zones, and install visible warnings and barriers. District administrations should be tasked with drawing up and enforcing local water-safety plans before more lives are lost. If the loss and suffering in Harwan do not jolt our institutions into urgent action, we will be complicit in the next drowning, not as helpless bystanders, but as willing accomplices of negligence.
