Back to square one

Kashmir's future is caught in a vicious circle

In 2019, the Union government had made provisions under Article 370 and 35A inoperative, doing away with Jammu & Kashmir’s special status and bifurcating the state into two Union Territories. It had then hoped to bring peace to the region and hold elections as soon as the Election Commission deemed fit. Now, a little more than two years since those seminal developments, Home Minister Amit Shah's first visit to the region is essentially a security review that takes place against the backdrop of the deaths of 11 civilians across the communal spectrum —Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh — and long-running military operations against militants in the Rajouri-Poonch sector that has cost the lives of nine soldiers so far.

This is a familiar vortex of violence and insecurity in the region — with the added twist of migrant workers from Bihar and UP now fleeing the territory. But it raises the question of whether the change in the status, which was accompanied by one of the strictest regimens of communication blackouts, extra-judicial arrests, and curfews and a swift revision of land laws, has brought substantive change to the region. Instead, jihadi fighters freed up from the Afghan battles have confirmed everybody’s worst fears rather faster than expected by killing Indians with impunity. All this stands in sharp contrast to Mr Shah’s insistence to members of the J&K Youth Club over the weekend that the changes under Article 370 marked the end of terrorism, nepotism, and corruption in the Valley.
 

This desired future is caught in a vicious circle. It is predicated on re-starting the political process and holding elections, for which a delimitation exercise necessitated by the reorganisation of the region has to be completed. But continuing militant action has stalled an exercise that had attracted some unrest from the local population in any case. In turn, delayed elections and the promised return of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir are likely to impede the Modi government’s vision of transforming the state into an investment haven. A planned investment summit in October 2019, two months after the change in status, was postponed because of the unstable security situation and finally emerged as a webinar in November 2020. According to the Union Territory’s administration, changes in land laws that now allow all Indians to buy land there and the announcement of a Rs 24,800-crore industrial development scheme have yielded investments worth Rs 23,000 crore from large corporations in telecom, cyber-optics, and hosiery. Interest, it said, has been evinced by investors from Japan and Dubai. Jindal Steel has been allotted land in the southern part of the Union Territory.

This is an encouraging picture, but questions will inevitably arise whether these intentions can be transformed into shovel-ready, employment-generating projects against the backdrop of locals gratuitously killed by militants and terrified migrant workers fleeing the territory. All told, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that despite all the multiple energetic policy interventions by New Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir is back to square one. Rendering the provisions under Articles 370 and 35A inoperative may well have integrated this troubled region with the rest of India. But this move has been vitiated by the lack of consultation with the people of the state, so even the most optimistic visions of peace and growing prosperity may remain elusive for some time to come.