Srinagar, Aug. 21 -- I have spent years watching trucks loaded with sand and clay pull onto highways across Jammu & Kashmir, and I have spent those same years filing the cases meant to stop them.

Today, I am writing this letter because local institutions have shown that they cannot, or will not, act.

This account draws largely on documents from my own litigation and the findings of a government committee.

Riverbed mining in Kashmir began generations ago with people using shovels and baskets, at a scale the land could handle. I watched that change roughly a decade ago, when hydraulic excavators like JCBs and LNTs replaced hand tools, and I watched it accelerate again once government infrastructure projects created demand contractors wer...