Without traditional politicians, the Govt is finding it extremely difficult to re-engage with people and reintegrate Kashmir
If the Government’s charges for booking him after the abrogation of Article 370 — that his messages are divisive, could incite people and youngsters, that he was as much a separatist — were meant to demonise him, then former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister and National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah has shown why he is still the voice of reason. And how the Government underestimated his net worth that could have been used to push its claimed objective of developing and mainstreaming the State. Soon after his release, he asked people to follow COVID-19 protocols as it was no time for politics. Now that he has started to speak, he has the pulse again as he says he won’t take his protests to the streets but fight it out democratically and legally. Nor will he condone violence of any sort to reclaim people’s rights. He also said he wouldn’t be contesting elections till Kashmir continued to be a Union Territory but was ready to prove his worth if the Government re-converted it into a State. Of course, he regretted that for all his party’s participation in national politics and even campaigns for federal parties and Opposition unity, he didn’t get much political support from them on his incarceration as they wilted under the majoritarian force of the Modi Government. But he was anyway ready to focus on his land and people. Clearly, without traditional politicians like Omar, whom the BJP thought would stand in the way of reintegration, the Government is finding it extremely difficult to re-engage with people. And as the anniversary of the scrapping of Article 370 is just days away, it has not much of a transformation to show without the mediatory presence of local parties. Politically, it could not even conduct the panchayat and local-level polls successfully although it has been hoping to build a new narrative ground up with candidates friendly to it. Over 12,000 panchayat seats continue to be vacant. The BJP has not been able to raise an alternative political front or a political climate. It may have encouraged the formation of the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) drawing rejects from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and NC, but it could not generate reassurance, least of all credibility, as it is purely transactional. The first stage for creating normalcy is restoring basic rights of people. While we are stressing under COVID-induced lockdowns, Kashmir has been writhing under perennial lockdown with a ban on 4G and an extremely limited mobility. While the rest of India is hooked on to digital classrooms, students in Kashmir are missing out on classes and are being denied online services like submission of forms, be it for job enrolment, registering a thesis or signing up for courses. Some students are coming down to Punjab or Jammu to access online study material or asking their kin and friends in other States to help. One would hate to hazard a guess on the adverse impact of wilfully denying education to the young people, some of whom are already voicing a conspiracy theory to keep Kashmiris out of competitive tests in India and abroad. With simmering discontent, the Government would be unwise to claim that the Valley is silent post the merger. It is just protest fatigue but that doesn’t mean the young won’t be drawn to violence or militancy. And while the rest of India is experiencing a booming digital economy post-lockdown, online portals and aggregators are hardly working in Kashmir. With no perceptible stability and peace, businesses had anyway stayed away from the Valley and the pandemic has further aggravated the sectors that were at least surviving. And even if some entrepreneurs are keen to be self-starters, militant threats keep them away. The core sectors of Kashmir’s economy, particularly agriculture driven by the apple trade, are on a downward spiral ever since the abrogation of Article 370. The sectors that were constant despite the turbulence, like tourism and handicrafts, have stalled and joblessness is at an all-time high. The domicile rights, by which the Government had hoped non-Kashmiris would settle in the Valley, have also backfired with the Dogras of Jammu and Buddhists of Ladakh now wary of outsiders, too. And for all the Centralisation of powers for greater efficiency, the local administration has become more corrupt.
In effect, even the most apolitical of Kashmiris are wondering why they have been subjugated so under a blanket assumption that they are all hostile. Why, despite being a populous territory, statehood cannot be restored now as Union Territories with lesser populations are now independent States? The rigidity of the Government is only proving to be counter-productive as just like in 1987, Pakistan is waiting to feed off this discontent and foment fresh trouble, having accelerated infiltration. The Government immediately needs to get some credible interlocutors to convey that it means business and does not want to be isolationist, that mutual negotiations with people’s representatives are possible without them harking back to Pakistan. Here it could have used Omar as an asset but has listed his ability “to convince his electorate to come out and vote in huge numbers even during the peak of militancy and poll boycotts” as a crime. If this “influencer” ability, something that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime prized to build a bridge over the conflict, is not investment-worthy, then the transition to a new narrative in Kashmir could be a colossal waste. Omar has been lionised by his captivity. His quiet resistance now could be a disabler than an enabler.
