It is regrettable that the devastation and human suffering caused on a massive scale by the Kashmir floods has engendered unseemly politics when the need was for rescue, relief and rehabilitation.
The politics has taken the direction of seeking to bring a bad name to the very agency — the Indian armed forces — without whose dedicated round-the-clock effort some three and a half lakh residents of the Kashmir Valley might not have escaped the clutches of nature’s fury even if, at the end of it, they are unhappy with the relatively slow pace of relief and rehabilitation activity being undertaken by multiple agencies, including some citizens’ groups and NGOs.
It needs to be kept in view that the Army and the IAF swung into action the moment the first impact of the disaster came to be felt. The men in uniform did not wait for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare the J&K floods a “national disaster” — they just went ahead and did their duty. And yet, they are being reviled, as though they had been remiss.
This is a very different experience from the earthquake of 2005 which devastated northern Kashmir. On that occasion, the forces were lauded by the people for the bravery they showed in many instances in overcoming difficult terrain to take people to safety.
The affected regions were geographically distant from Srinagar, the focal point of secessionist politics which gains traction from fundamentalist moles burrowed in the lanes and bylanes of the capital city in which about a quarter of the Valley population of some 60 lakhs resides. These elements surpass most in the art of whisper politics and have a “jungle telegraph” of their own.
It may also be germane that the local population in the earthquake-hit areas were mainly “Pahari”, not enticed by the charms of secessionist politics. They had no stake in trying to bring the armed forces — which saved them from certain death — into disrepute.
But having said this, it is pertinent to observe that the silent citizen even in Srinagar is not enamoured of the ways of separatist politics but can be manipulated by the latter. The anti-Army flood politics on view could have been blunted at the start if the ruling dispensation in Kashmir had been politically alert.
Alas, chief minister Omar Abdullah, while well-intentioned, is not seen as being politically acute. His government can even now seek to gain the upper hand by demonstrating that it can mobilise manpower and resources to attend to people crying out for humanitarian assistance, although the state secretariat has emerged from the swirling flood waters after 11 days only on Thursday.
