[Reader-list] Fw: Re: Why Kashmir defies solutions

Wali Arifi waliarifi3 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 10 02:01:38 IST 2010


Perhaps this write up which appeared in the June issue of Honour magazine
can provide a contextual understanding of the process of development and
employment in Kashmir.






http://thehonour.org/Main.asp?MagID=3&MagNo=22



Kashmir: Disempowering through Democracy

The legislature just added a link in the long chain of constitutional tools
that have made Kashmir into a colony administered through a coercive and
unjust democracy.

Shahzeb Lone

When Kashmiris are called upon to vote, it’s to adorn a system of democracy
that must work to disempower the voter. The political history of the
Indian-applied democracy in Kashmir is a long narrative of constitutional
fraud. Its foundations were laid through arm-twisting to create a never
ending room and legalise a perpetual heist of rights.

The latest loot came through the Job Bill recently passed by a legislature
whose election the Indian democrats profusely congratulated themselves and
Kashmiris for. Or, is it a punishment for a Muslim-majority people for not
having a caste system? The Bill may have rightly prohibited inter-district
recruitment in government jobs, but extends eight percent reservation in
jobs for Schedule Castes even to districts that don’t have them at all. This
effectively means fewer jobs for casteless communities like the Muslim
majority and Buddhists of Jammu and Kashmir.

This legislative approach of disempowering a majority identity has taken
many years to graduate from simple and sweet-sounding ill-intention -
directed at a gullible people - to concrete legislative methods. The then
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi could not camouflage his political desire of
furthering control to Kashmiri population rather than envision an empowering
scenario when he came visiting in 1987.

A long pending demand of establishing a college in an area was simply shot
down by the Prime Minister arguing: ‘What would a college get you? I’ll
rather establish an industrial unit so that you’ve jobs.’ The Indian Prime
Minister underscored a significant intention that meant Kashmir will get
anything that will keep them dependent, but money will not be spent on local
capacity building.

Intentions like this have earnestly been copied by representatives Kashmiris
thought they elect to safeguard their interests and secure their futures,
political or otherwise. Just like New Delhi, these ‘democratically elected
representatives’ do not do anything that does not feed or enhance control
over a rebelling people.

For a green revolution in neighbouring Punjab, food security for rice-eating
Kashmiris was envisioned and later ensured through subsidy. This despite and
after the revolutionary land reforms. Why subsidy? Why rice was made cheaper
for a Kashmiri? This was the beginning of making the local political economy
dependent on outside largesse dispensed through the local legislature. This
step of subsidizing the staple determined the direction the project of
political and social engineering in Kashmir continues to maintain.

This approach finds its latest push in the promotion of tourism industry in
Kashmir. Money is pumped into tourism development despite its extreme
vulnerabilities. The industry no doubt ensures temporary livelihoods, but
it’s used to bring in certain kind of political influence and to feed a
certain discourse of enforced normality. It is also projected as the
mainstay of Kashmir’s economy at the peril of the region’s actual economic
backbone of horticulture and handicrafts. For most part, the erstwhile
thriving sericulture industry stands wiped out, while horticulture has
become a step child of the state attention.

Thousands of crores of rupees are spent on the modernization of police and
security of the state apparatus. A few crore rupees could never be granted
to establish even a single cold storage facility for the delicate
horticulture produce even before the current security scenario emerged.

Couple this with the efforts for development of modern industry in Kashmir
division. Investment committed by the state government for industrialization
in Kashmir is a paltry percentage of that for Jammu. In 2009 alone, a mere
12 crore rupees were committed for more than 2000 industrial units in
Kashmir while 325 crore rupees were set aside for investment in just 422
units in Jammu. It is hard to miss the obtuse ratio of this investment into
“equitable” regional development of the state.

Dolling out government jobs in social and education sectors in lieu of
political loyalties appears like a well thought out project to neutralise
unrest that has characterized post-1947 Kashmir. Immediately after diluting
Kashmir’s autonomy in the 1950s, the political engineers perpetrated the
opium of corruption in all spheres of life. Jobs were granted on cigarette
packing. Since grant of government jobs was the best means available with
the state to turn a people around politically, competence and required
qualification were sacrificed for recruitment in the all important education
sector. A widespread impression lived for a long time that if one couldn’t
secure a job anywhere education department became the most easily available
parking lot. Thus, a future was compromised for the longest term.

But the state never stopped employing any other means to incapacitate the
people. Khouftan Fakirs (eavesdroppers for the state) were deployed all
across to index the population and to let them know if they were not with
the state’s political project they were legitimately liable for coercive
treatment. Those who did not succumb to the state run social engineering
project were persecuted and finally obliterated from the political
landscape. Kashmir’s political history is full of such instances. As the
state’s approach turned more and more blatant in ways including large scale
rigging of elections, it finally piled up and convulsed to catalyse an armed
political rebellion.

Decade on decade, this socio-political engineering project kept on turning
complex. Its complexity and intensity acquired a dizzying pace since 1990s.
It has now long reached a stage where anything and everything that the state
government, the central government and the gigantic security grid does is
directed at enhancing control over the population.

In the prevailing circumstances, this appears to be the only way for the
state objectives in Kashmir to stay on a particularly desired course. In
this paradigm the state is invested in consistently raising economic stakes
of the population to further the argument that “economic development is
freedom”.

The latest “kill” in this array of measures is the Job Bill. The absence of
a robust response to the Bill in tandem with the overall political reality
of Kashmir presents a scenario where anything less than losing one’s life
has become “normal”.


More information about the reader-list mailing list