Will Kashmiris buy PM’s vikas gambit?

The sequencing seems unusual. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on Thursday in an effort to inform and educate the country on the necessity — as he sees it — of abrogating the special status for Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution, and to persuade the people of J&K that benefits will accrue, now that the recent history lay buried. In his view, Article 370 (and related provisions) hampered development and fostered separatism, terrorism, dynasty and corruption.

It would have made more sense to hear the PM on the contentious and emotional subject before the sweeping constitutional changes were brought to Parliament by Union home minister Amit Shah on August 5, catching the country by surprise.

In other instances of bifurcation of states, popular movements generally accompanied these processes — as in the creation of Andhra Pradesh (and later Telangana too), retaining Bombay (now Mumbai) as part of Maharashtra, or carving Jharkhand out of Bihar. Fierce debates ensued with governments, political parties and civil society entities advancing their thinking before the public.

In dramatic contrast, the changes in respect of J&K were introduced by stealth, in conditions of an information and communications blackout, with increased troops density in the Valley, and in curfew conditions.

Evidently, it was thought that the radical changes being ushered in will be deeply unpopular and may lead to large-scale and, possibly, violent protests. Consequently, debate and discussion was off the government’s agenda. The people of the Valley, especially, were thought worthy of disregard, unlike in other states.

Even so, the PM has seen it fit to seek to persuade Kashmir that a new dawn of development, and the passing of political power to a new generation, were now at hand with the scrapping of the earlier provisions. Article 370 was the villain of the piece, it was argued.

But the substantiation of these arguments looks suspect. For a start, J&K, and especially the Kashmir Valley, is not a place bypassed by development. In spite of highly unusual political conditions and conditions of terrorism chiefly on account of Pakistan (which is just across the Line of Control) that have characterised J&K, educational levels are high compared to most states, the health indices compare with some of the best states in the country, the physical infrastructure is reasonably sound, and the capacity of the people to spend on consumption, especially in the Valley region, is quite impressive. There are practically no beggars in Kashmir, on the whole Kashmiris do not engage in hard physical labour, and the unemployment that exists (it is moderately high) is generally educated unemployment.  

If the Centre had to make J&K a UT and bring the state under New Delhi's control in order to promote faster development, then states like UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Odisha, and parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra might have been better candidates. If propaganda is eschewed, persuading the country that the changes are positive might prove difficult.