Standing under the hot exhaust from an electricity turbine, an engineer rubs the grime off the front of the machine. The instrument panel has shattered in a few places and the area is littered with pigeon droppings, but it's still possible to read the words stamped into the metal: "Leningrad, USSR, 1973."
These old turbines have run almost continuously since they were installed on the Neelum River in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. They need to be removed and repaired, but the mountainous state faces serious electricity shortages and doesn't want to suffer the loss of this station's 105 megawatts.
The fact that Kashmir struggles for every last megawatt of electricity has become a tense political issue in a state already seething with rebellion. As quarrels erupt between India and Pakistan over the Indus River and its tributaries, the people who live near the waters' source in the Himalayan mountains are trying to stake their own claim.
"This is our foremost demand: give us power projects," said Shakeel Qalander, president of the Federation Chamber of Industries Kashmir.
The business group conveyed that message to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to the valley this summer. So far, the central government has shown no indication that it will accept the state's demand for more hydroelectricity. India has enough troubles with the 33 power projects already at various stages of completion on the Indus. Pakistan claims they will affect river flows, violating the Indus Water Treaty.
It is objections such as those that hurt the people of Kashmir, according to Indian government officials who briefed journalists on water issues in New Delhi. The officials claimed that Kashmir suffers electricity shortages because Pakistan's frivolous complaints about treaty violations have delayed the projects, dragging them through years of mediation and arbitration.
Kashmir's business association puts a dollar figure on the impasse, estimating the state could be collecting $13-billion annual revenue from electricity exports - twice its current tax revenue - if allowed to harness the full hydroelectric potential of water cascading down from the mountains.
The state government recently commissioned its own study of the issue, hoping to persuade New Delhi to pay compensation for the lost revenue.
The Indus Water Treaty limits development on three rivers flowing into Pakistan, ensuring more water for those downstream, but Kashmir views this as sacrificing economic progress for the sake of peace.
"Clearly there's a huge gap between the potential we have and how much we're able to exploit," said Kashmir's top politician, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. He called the water treaty "grossly unfair," and claimed that without such limitations his state could increase its generating capacity from 2,300 megawatts to 20,000.
But the treaty with Pakistan isn't the only factor limiting Kashmir's hydroelectric development. Zubair Ahmad Dar, a program officer at the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation who studied water issues at Oxford University before returning home to Kashmir, says there's a symmetry to the way India and Pakistan both are deflecting their internal conflicts over water, turning them into cross-border disputes.
"They're telling us Pakistan has taken away your rights, Pakistan is the bad guy," he said. "The fact is that other states get a much bigger share of their own hydroelectricity."
Kashmir gets only 12 per cent of the electricity supplied by major turbines installed in recent years by NHPC Limited, a company owned by the central government. That hardly covers the state's requirements, forcing Kashmir to buy electricity from the same northern grid that supplies New Delhi.
Mr. Dar says other states in India have deals that give them up to 50 per cent of the electricity generated on their own rivers. New Delhi has discouraged the Kashmir government from launching its own projects, he added, because the central government refuses to give the loan guarantees necessary to bring in private investment.
That leaves Kashmiris watching the rivers flowing through their valley, dreaming about the riches slipping past them. Entrepreneurs have complained to the business association that they want to construct more steel mills in the state, but cannot secure a supply of electricity. Mining companies have discovered deposits of blue sapphire, limestone, bauxite, marble and gypsum in the hills and mountains, but mining remains a small industry because of power shortages.
Mr. Qalander, of the local business association, said the electricity problems have contributed to rising unemployment in the valley, which in turn adds to the number of young men in the streets who throw stones in protest against Indian security forces.
"It all comes down to scarcity of power," he said. "By now we should have been a very wealthy state, with all this water."