Before the 2019 general election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that the problem in Jammu and Kashmir has been kept confined to “two-and-a-half districts” and that the panchayat polls (December 2018) were an indication of the enthusiasm in the State for democratic processes. It is surprising that he has been able to make this claim unchallenged. No one asked him which seven-and-a-half districts in the Valley are shining examples of a problem being satisfactorily solved. It is a kind of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ syndrome. Given the nature of prime ministerial interviews, often minutely scripted and choreographed, his advisers also seem to be suffering from this syndrome, characterised by a significant distortion of reality. The attempt to put off the Assembly elections till after the Amarnath yatra is a piece of this distortion.
Beyond the lockdown
Consider these developments in the State. On April 4, over a month-and-a-half after the Pulwama attack (in February), an announcement was made that the National Highway between Baramulla and Udhampur would be closed to civilian traffic for two days a week to facilitate convoy movements. It did not get the attention it deserved in the national media, but many security planners were aghast.
The highway is a lifeline for the local population, with many lateral roads and passes through more than two-and-a-half districts. The armed forces are so heavily deployed and the necessity for supplies and replenishments so constant that they use the roads more than two days in a week. If the ban now stands lifted, it was because it is untenable.
A sense of alienation
Like Alice in the Hall of Mirrors, Mr. Modi has presented us an illusion. He has slipped into the habit of telling various interviewers the official version of the way people in J&K are warming up to elections. He told one: “You have seen the peaceful manner in which panchayat elections (December 2018) were conducted in the Valley. It has enthused us and shown the love of common Kashmiris for democracy.” To another he pointed out: “Local-level elections were not held for many years in the Srinagar Valley. Earlier governments were obstructions. Right now we have conducted elections; 75% of the polling took place and there was not a single incident of violence. Hundreds of people were killed in panchayat elections in West Bengal, but there was not a single incident in Kashmir. Are conditions bad in Bengal or in Kashmir?”
The panchayat polls, held over as many as seven phases, were marked by the absence of the mainstream political parties such as the Congress or the National Conference or the Peoples Democratic Party. It is not prudent to interpret the enthusiasm here and project it on to the Assembly elections.
A parsing of the panchayat poll figures also shows a different reality, marked by astoundingly low polling in many wards, no representatives in hundreds of other wards, overall something that was reiterated more effectively in the Lok Sabha election.
In the parliamentary constituencies of Baramulla, Srinagar and Anantnag, voter turnout dipped while in the Shopian and Pulwama areas there was hardly any enthusiasm. At dozens of booths no one turned out to vote, the most dismal voting figures since the late 1980s. That’s how far back Mr. Modi’s policies have set the clock. Not the best advertisement for a problem that is confined merely to two-and-a-half districts.
Worse, this low turnout was not the result of separatists trying to enforce a boycott. All of the Hurriyat leaders have been taken out of the reckoning. As there was not much violence, militants were not out in strength in trying to intimidate people from voting. The people were simply not interested in voting. A great sense of alienation and a rejection of democratic process alone explains this abysmal turnout.
Arresting the drift
Though the Prime Minister often says that he has taken the high road of his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee (recall the former Prime Minister’s ‘Insaniyat, Jamhooriyat, Kashmiriyat’ formulation) there is little evidence of this on the ground and in the minds of Kashmiris. Only if the stage is set for an early Assembly election can something be salvaged. By not holding Assembly elections soon, the two-and-a-half district problem is not going to be halved. The bulk of the Indian Army is not deployed in West Bengal because of some trifling two-and-a-half district problem. It is deployed in Kashmir. If the problem was indeed so small, it should have been easy enough to have held the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections simultaneously in J&K. The results of the Lok Sabha election have confirmed the deep political divisions.
Yet now is the time to hold Assembly elections. It is easy enough to find reasons not to hold polls till an option suitable to New Delhi emerges: it is easy enough to cite the “tourism season” and the Amarnath yatra to put off the decision till November, when the capital shifts to Jammu. And so on. In the 1990s, when Governor’s Rule was imposed for nearly seven years, militancy soared. The longer the decision is put off, the more young and educated people, who are already disillusioned with the way things are going in that area, are going to drift towards militancy. Now that the Prime Minister has made a conciliatory start, he should extend the same sense of inclusiveness to the Kashmir Valley, and begin anew.
sudarshan.v@thehindu.co.in
