Jammu & Kashmir: Having the cake & eating it too?
- In Current Affairs
- 11:33 AM, Aug 09, 2016
- Parag Amalnerkar
The killing of Burhan Wani by the Indian security forces resulted in engineered violence, our friendly neighborhood fishing in the vitiated atmosphere but more worryingly the propaganda by the usual Indian suspects which does beg scrutiny on where their loyalties lie. It is also sad to see the state of J&K have limited leadership options in the form of Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti , both displaying an overt tendency to play to the gallery at the cost of India.
To refresh all on the incident, Burhan Wani was killed in a planned operation on 8 July 2016 along with two other fighters later identified as Sartaj Ahmad Sheikh and Pervaiz Ahmad Lashkari. He and his accomplices were killed in Bumdoora village in Kokernag area, by a joint team of the special operations group of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and 19 Rashtriya Rifles .
The purpose here is to delve into the well-known but equally well ignored problem of how the Indian State led by the Congress has for decades outsourced the management of J&K to different families (read dynasties) from time to time who did nothing but pretend to govern while living on the doles of the Centre yet keeping J&K out of bounds from the rest of the country.
Let’s look at some unique benefits that J&K enjoys:
- A Kashmiri gets eight times more money from the Centre than any other state citizen
- Kashmir’s revenue generation is not only paltry , it cannot even pay its own wage bill without the assistance of the Centre
- The per capita consumption has been steadily rising and one of the reasons is that the 5.5Lac strong security force deployed there are willing buyers of local produce
- While other states get Central assistance in the ratio of 70 per cent debt to 30 per cent grant, Jammu and Kashmir (as a special category state) got 90 per cent of its assistance as grant and only 10 per cent as debt.
- Since 1997-98- though the Comptroller and Auditor-General has indicted the state Government for misuse of plan funds- even the 10 per cent repayment criteria has been removed and the Centre has been funding the entire plan expenditure of Jammu and Kashmir or Rs.11,400 crore in five years.
Let’s also spell out the Key responsibilities that the Chief Minister of any state would need to own and how it is not so in the case of the J&K Chief Minister:
- Law & Order: a addressed by the same forces who are subjected to cowardly attacks from time to time by separatists emboldened by a convenient spineless silence by the current and past J&K CM’s
- Revenue generation: hardly a priority since most bills that need to be paid to Government entities and employees are funded by the Centre
- Education and Employment: Decades ago the Regional Engineering College in J&K virtually shut down and students had to be reallocated to other state REC’s. We now have non Kashmir students being targeted by separatists! Unacceptable.
None of these are a charter for the J&K Chief Minister’s role because all these key responsibilities are either funded and managed by the Indian Government at the Centre or ignored for dangerous political maneuvers for historical reasons and errors (including Article 370).
Most of the state’s revenue generation comes from local produce (Fruits & Flowers), Tourism (which also had taken a hit) and value added handicrafts which do not particularly require education (skills yes). If there are no Industries that can be set up there, if there is no local educated talent available there- how will jobs be generated? And we all know unemployed youth are a tinder keg if not channeled in the right direction.
It is sad to see the Indian Army repeatedly being asked to defend (not attack, please note) against “innocent” young youth with their hands tied behind their back. If the Indian Army is given a free hand it would not take much to eliminate known rabble rousers and cleanse the state ( a peek into how Sri Lanka eliminated LTTE would be pertinent here). Belated but nevertheless relevant news reports suggest that the Indian security security agencies have prepared a dossier in which they have detailed how the children and close relatives of separatist leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Mohammad Ashraf Ali alias Ashraf Sehrai and Asiya Andrabi, head of the radical Dukhtran-e-Millat have been shifted out of India. An official said this about Geelani:
“Geelani, who has destroyed the future of so many young people of the valley, has made sure that his future generation is kept out of this so-called fight for freedom. Geelani, because of his perceived hold on the Kashmiri youth, manages to arm-twist the government every now and then, so much so that he spews venom against the same police which provides him all round protection. They are treated like privileged guests, allowed to go to foreign countries whenever they want and yet they leave no chance to fan violence in the valley”
While one can blame Pakistan (clearly a failed state and a scourge for the world) for keeping the valley on the boil, time has come for the people of J&K to stop being a drain on the National exchequer, National security and National sentiment. Instead of focusing on building lives, livelihood and letting the state prosper, local youth have chosen to die for a questionable cause with elders either tacitly abetting or ignoring their destructive produce.
Will citizens of J&K ever come out of their shackled ghettoism and march towards development and contribute to India? The answer so far seems to be NO and if this continues we need to switch gears and stop letting this state drain India, the crutches of the Indian state cannot be seen as a permanent lifeline. The attempt of the security agencies to expose how the separatists are provoking local youth into wasting their life while having their wards live comfortably overseas is a step in the right direction. These measures should accelerate and compel J&K to make a clear choice in favor or being a part of truly democratic and prosperous India.
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