Srinagar, April 28 -- ByFaisal Rashid Bhat

A pale bulb swings above a narrow shed on the edge of a village in south Kashmir's Pulwama district. Steam rises from fresh dung on the floor. Metal buckets clatter against concrete as 42-year-old dairy farmer Ghulam Mohammad bends beside a brown Jersey cow and begins the morning milking.

Morning mist still grips the fields outside. His hands move quickly through work he learned as a child, work his father performed before him.

A tractor rattles somewhere in the dark, dogs bark near the road, and milk foams into the bucket in thick white streams.

"Every morning begins like this," he said, stopping to scatter hay before another cow. "The animals eat before anyone in my family does."

The shed ...