Kashmir is again in the grip of election fever; promises,
pledges are manufactured and the cliché of ‘change’ is broadcast from the every
political podium in the chilly days of Chillai Kalan. This time the enthusiasm among
the electorates is quite high and as usual the traditional as well as seasonal
political parties present a canvass of distress and auspicious. Certainly it’s distressing
to those who hold this hypothesis that the people of Kashmir can’t be easily
hoodwinked and victimized by any political gimmicks. It’s auspicious to those
who after avalanche of betrayals and horns waggling yet again successfully managed
to stage a democratic show on the commitments which they never accomplished. However
many political analysts in the valley believe that the day right wing nationalist Hindu party came to
power in the centre and their immediate political plunge into the Kashmir
politics with provocative and polarized agenda heightened the voter turnout. In
the backdrop of all these explicit political dimensions, common Kashmiri
asserts a view that the socio- economic and political discourse in the state
has become so fragile and fractured that forces people to choose ballot. On the
flipside of political drama people of the state know the gothic face of all
these democratic dances and how it pushed Kashmir into the Dark Age. However in
this election people have decided at least to get rid of miss governance,
corruption and fist rule through a democratic exercise in a place where they have
never seen the real face of democracy.
Every time when the election drums are beaten in the valley all
the so called mainstream political parties including those ruled the state for
years are contesting elections in the name of basic amenities like electricity,
roads, drinking water and health care. Moreover they also raise their political
lollypops like self rule and autonomy in the election season just to maneuver the
sentiment and came to power and nothing else. How better it would have been if
they have focused on the public-related issues like issues of governance, development
and taken on the corrupt elements in the political establishment and
administration but instead of that they always prefer to be rubber stamps. In their tenures they would have taken
concrete steps at least to put an end to the acute power crisis which sometimes
through life out of gear for weeks and it goes bad to worse in the winter
season. Forget the basic needs, the so called mainstream elected
representatives could not stop the havoc of NHPC on our natural resources
instead of that gave it a free hand to operate above the law of land and had
another state with in a state. The erratic power cuts, scarcity of drinking
water, and the dilapidated roads have taken valleyites back into the days of
Dark Age. It is not the first time that the people of valley are facing such
endemic problems but they are intentionally created ordeals by our own so
called red and green brigades of Kashmir. On the employment front all the
consecutive governments have exploited the unemployed youth for their own vote
bank politics, as result of that thousands of hapless daily wagers, need basis;
contractual employees have become the abject to neo slavery. In the name of
development, projects like railway link, northern highway corridor might herald
new era of progress but when the projects are aimed to strengthen its grip over
the territory and the sensitive ecology and agriculture sector is not taken
into consideration, then the recent devastating deluge, increase in the temperature
and premature glacier melting are the deadly repercussions people in the valley
have to brunt. On the economical structure, governments as well as different
banks are frantically outsourcing their benefit schemes in the form of
business, car, house and educational loans at a whopping interest rate. This
economical engineering in a concentration camp where people open their shops,
drivers run their vehicles for hours and colleges remain open for few days in a
week there such schemes are making people to live on the edge. It may have
urbanized the valley and helped few people to establish small business units but
at the same time jeopardized the very essence of our social fabric and values
of life due to the bankruptcy.
Education sector over the decades has faced the most brunt of
conflict and apathy from the all successive governments. Although the valley
witnessed mushroom growth of private schools and other IT institutes which has
improved the standard of education and the literacy rate of state. But in the
higher education where you have the monopoly of single university and few engineering
colleges ruined the research structure of the valley where we hardly produce
the scientists and intellectuals established from the last 60 years. Although
the steps are being taken to establish new varsities and technical colleges to
ease the competition and encourage students for research and professional
courses but will it sustain given the alarming unemployment rate is certainly a
big question?
In spite of all this macabre of death and destruction people
time and again participated in a democratic exercise to elect their
representatives on those day today issues sorted out to be without any further
delay. People are pinning their hopes and giving these political forces another
chance to full fill their promises and bring political stability in the state
before the volcano of anger burn down everything. Unfortunately every time their
participation in the assembly election is being celebrated in the prime time
talk shows in air and print and anticipate it as a referendum. If New Delhi again
try to sell the large turnout in the assembly election their biggest political
victory over the separatists it will be yet another gory mistake. Given the
large participation of people, industrialists, bureaucrats, tired separatists
and noted academicians joining the so called mainstream politics but the banker
relationship between the New Delhi and the people of state continues since the
1987 rigged election when the mandate was hijacked and dissent was muzzled.
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After that all the elections in the state took place in the
shadow of violence and fear. The 1990 assembly election was completely
boycotted but afterwards the participation of people in the elections has
increased due to the governance miseries pushed people in the state to give
clear mandate to this political class whose politics is usually conditioned by
betrayals and hypocrisy.
On the other side of story resistance leaders of valley were
never given a democratic space in a democratic show by the authorities to run
their election boycott campaign. This kind of selective and self serving democratic
activity being carried out with the help of local collaborators in the state to
show the rest of world that all is well will. The prevailing political unrest
in the valley, these crafty so called
mainstream politicians also uphold this narrative that neither the people have rejected
the resistance groups nor its a referendum in favor of any country, it’s a vote
by the besieged people to put an end to the day to day grievances. In between all the rhetoric’s
if we closely analyze for a moment the perpetual agony and miseries then those whom people vote again and again
are responsible and culpable. They way world witnessed massive peaceful public
uprising for almost three consecutive years and how the innocent blood was spilled
across the valley to crush the sentiment. The criminal silence of these so
called representatives will go down in the history pages as the soul less and
sold out political leaders Kashmir has ever seen.
In light of the stupendous voter turnout in the Kashmir
Valley, people are again expecting men in red and green to live up to their
promises and at least restore some sort of dignity and peace. But what makes
this election ugly and disappointing is that a new gang of surrogates are in
the fray to carry the fetus of opportunity and backstabbing at any cost will
one day force people in future to remove this democratic mask forever. The
irony is that people risk everything for them to send them in assemblies and be
the voice of voiceless but what they have received so far is utter humiliation,
subjugation, corruption and an endless fear psychosis in which people spend their every night and
day. This gutter game for power struggle among the so called mainstream parties
ignoring the fact people voted them to run the administrative show not an olive
branch to anyone who just sees it as a political referendum. Those who were once
the roaring lions and undefeatable force in the valley are so anemic today to
stand among people. Those, who fantasy that the high turnout shows people bodes
well in Indian democracy and is a serious blow to the resistance groups and the
ongoing struggle, then the past public uprising should serve them as a reminder
to their short memory that sentiment runs deep here. The elections and then the
huge participation of people is confined just to run the local administrative
show and it will be irrelevant, inappropriate and a big blunder to frame this
democratic exercise as an alternative to the Kashmir imbroglio.
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