Integrating J&K

To gain credibility, the clampdown needs to be relaxed

It has been three weeks since the Narendra Modi government read down the provisions of Article 370 for Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) but the promised return to normalcy remains elusive. The fact that an opposition delegation was prevented from visiting Srinagar over the weekend, and a person died in stone-throwing on Sunday — a familiar pattern these past three decades — underlines this ground reality. To be sure, the lockdown was an open-ended exercise: Home Minister Amit Shah had told the Rajya Sabha that full status would be restored to J&K at “the appropriate time”. The definition of “appropriate” is