Mir Writes / Mujhe Hai Hukum-e-Azaan: Kashmir Elections: Vote not Victory

Mir Writes / Mujhe Hai Hukum-e-Azaan: Kashmir Elections: Vote not Victory: K ashmir is again in the grip of election fever; promises, pledges are manufactured and the cliché of ‘change’ is broadcast from the...

Kashmir Elections: Vote not Victory

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.

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.