By Sushant Sareen
One year after the sweeping constitutional changes in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, the skies have still not fallen. All the hyperbole, hysterics and histrionics of the doomsday predictors, genocide watchers, demographic invasion theorists have come to nought. The putrid and puerile propaganda by the ignorant, the ignoble and the instigators has fallen flat. Kashmir hasn’t exploded, as many had feared and some had hoped. There has been no exodus out of Kashmir – the single most important metric to judge if there is any egregious repression being unleashed on the population. Nor is there any influx into Kashmir – the only metric to measure if any forced demographic transformation is taking place. Far from snatching the rights of the people and disenfranchising them, the new constitutional arrangements have actually bestowed all the rights which all other Indian citizens enjoy. Life in newly created Union Territory (UT) – a temporary arrangement according to the Home Minister of India – is as normal as could be in these times of the Chinese Virus. In fact, just before the virus hit, most of the restrictions imposed at the time of the hollowing out of the contentious and controversial Article 370, had been lifted – markets were functioning, educational institutions had opened, communication links restored (except for 4G).
To be sure, making Article 370 redundant – it continues to exist in the Indian constitution – is not a magic wand that would overnight transform J&K. But it marks a tectonic shift away from the continuing drift in the affairs of the erstwhile state. It is a work in progress, and one year later not only is work happening, but the green shoots of progress are also becoming visible. The detractors of the move will of course see the glass half empty. They will pick on every incident to drive home the point that the entire exercise undertaken on August 5, 2019, was pointless, and a lot of what the government is claiming to have done could have been done without overturning the earlier constitutional system. The trouble with this argument is that it is just an argument. If things could have been done earlier, they would have been done. But the way the system was structured, it wasn’t possible to do many of the things that have now been initiated.
Because J&K, and in particular the Kashmir Valley, has not been normal for nearly three decades now, there has been a tendency to look at everything from the prism of security. The fact that in disturbed areas, the news equivalent of Gresham’s law operates – bad or negative news drives out or submerges the good or positive news – means that post-constitutional reform the focus has remained on the security situation, to the exclusion of the good things that are also happening. Take for instance the marginalised communities and vulnerable sections of society in J&K which for the first time have started benefiting from the affirmative action of the government. This has become possible because of the extension of nearly 900 central laws to the UT, repeal of nearly over 150 state laws and modifications in as many state laws. As a result of these legal reforms, the scheduled castes and tribes receive the same protection of law in the UT as they do in the rest of the country. What is more, children are entitled to free and compulsory education and senior citizens and parents are also protected under law.
Marginalised communities like the Paharis and the economically weaker sections have started receiving the benefits of 4% and 10% reservations respectively in jobs and educational institutions. Reservations for OBCs and residents living in the border regions have also started receiving enhanced reservation benefits. The Scheduled Tribes, another marginalised section of society, are now entitled to reserved seats in the legislative assembly. Refugees from West Pakistan who settled in the erstwhile state after Partition and who were denied domicile for decades have now received their domicile certificates entitling them to all the rights and privileges that other residents of J&K enjoy. Most of all, the legal reforms have empowered women and secured their property rights, including the right of women who have married outside the UT to bequeath their property to their children.
This is only the tip of the iceberg on the new initiatives undertaken post constitutional reforms in J&K. In the last one year, nearly 25000 new college seats have been added. The path-breaking Ayushman Bharat health scheme extended to J&K to give universal healthcare coverage to nearly 10 million people in the UT. Reforms have been initiated in the agriculture sector, a major effort has been taken for skilling and training for employability, local governments (Panchayats) have been empowered and grassroots democracy, which had been ignored by the old political elite, has been strengthened. Long pending and delayed infrastructure projects have been completed and new development projects launched. Administrative reforms to bring greater transparency and improve delivery of public services have been undertaken and a big push has been made to improve ease of doing business in the UT which will attract new investment and create jobs. A new scholarship scheme has been introduced by the central government to assist students who want to pursue higher studies outside the UT. In 2019 alone, the number of students from J&K who availed the scholarships went up by around 40%. The government is now actively considering waiving the population-based quota of scholarships for the UT.
Of course, the impressive list of what has happened in the last one year has not quite received the attention it deserved. Part of the problem is that most people who cover Kashmir function like drain inspectors, and look only for the dark underbelly to the exclusion of everything else. And while it can be nobody’s case that J&K has become the land of milk and honey, it is also not true that there is only bad news coming out of the UT. Even on the security front, the law enforcement agencies have made remarkable gains. Over 150 terrorists have been eliminated in just the first seven months of 2020. Recruitment is down, in part because the shelf life of terrorists has come down drastically and new recruits are often neutralised within weeks, if not days, of picking up the gun. Apart from the kinetic operations, the crackdown on the money laundering and terror finance networks have also picked up pace. Assets of people involved in money laundering and financing of terrorist organisations have been seized and this has started having a salutary effect on the situation because for the first time in decades it has become clear that terrorism is not going to pay.
The strides made in the last one year in the security, development and welfare works, administrative and legal reforms aside, there is one area in which the government seems to be lagging behind. There is as yet no clear political roadmap on restoring the democratic process in the UT and moving towards restoring full statehood. The focus on governance reforms should not come at the expense of the democratic aspirations of the people in the UT. It is imperative that the government in Delhi lift the fog over the political roadmap so that the people can elect their own representatives. Governance by bureaucrats works only up to a point, after which it becomes counter-productive.
Even so, a year after the constitutional reforms, the doomsday scenarios that many naysayers had painted have been belied by the positive developments on the ground. Of course, there is a lot more that needs to be done in the UT to improve the lives of the people and integrate them into the national mainstream, especially psychologically. But it would be specious for anyone to think that this would happen with the snap of the finger. These things take time. But if the path is right and the focus unwavering, then this could happen a lot faster than what many people anticipate.
Get in touch with the writer of this article, Sushant Sareen, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation @sushantsareen on Twitter.
(Syndicated content)
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