Sorry. Kashmiri leaders have shown themselves to be too individualistic and visionless  people  that the masses in Kashmir must be praying for  God to come and rescue them from their leaders, who have  no clue of what a pain of an ordinary  man  is. This pain is far beyond the mourning  of those who lost their dear ones. It is the collective pain of  the people of Kashmir who don’t have a leader to lead in the hard times.

It’s a shame that there is not a single leader in the Valley  willing to own his or her portion of responsibility in the contribution  to the mess in which the whole situation is, as of today.  Some were physically not there, others  despite their physical presence were absent  in the political landscape of Kashmir excepting in the press.

Nothing can be expected of leaders  whom the people of Kashmir  voted in the 2008 Assembly elections, if they could not deliver now  when the people needed them most. It’s pointless to revisit history. The road ahead is muddled as well.  The conduct of the ruling parties and  those in opposition cannot be condoned. It is  particularly so  in the given situation, where some leaders have tried to  identify  with the people  by  using the highly emotional and poetic  phrases like “ flesh and blood of Kashmir”. And there are others whose pain poured out  on the pages of newspapers.

It is not the time to recount what went wrong and where. It  also is not the  time when the game of finger- pointing should  guide the discourse  because that would lead the people nowhere. But it’s certainly time to do  an honest introspection why things went  wrong and  who are the men who  allowed it to happen. Every one should be held accountable and before undertaking this exercise, it’s important each one of them  postmortem their own role. If need be  biopsy too should be done  and see where from malignancy has originated or it is just a benign one.

The separatists  have been licking their wounds ever since the people defied  their calls to boycott polls  during the Assembly elections. They had opted for mainstream parties and had taken extra risk, even though some may say it was for “ saadak , bijli, pani.” , a phrase that  defines that how even after  decades of promises, the people are without basic amenities.  It was not to  the liking of the separatists who had wished that the people who had filled the streets in thousands only few months before the polls would not queue up  before the polling booths or press buttons on one symbol or the other. They were wrong . People place their needs above everything else.

But  where they had failed, the government provided them opportunity , place and time to succeed. It was because of the  failure of the government in addressing  grievances of the people. It  was busy enjoying power, while the people waited for their share of  development, jobs , sense of participation. This  provided  an opening  to those who were looking for occasions to cause trouble. They used their rhetoric and  other powers  to further their phrases for Kashmir solution. It’s a time to ponder:  who lost the lives, limbs and economy in the process. Did this kind of politics bring Kashmir closer to any solution. Certainly not.

 Now  it is the turn of the Government  to do some explaining .  Despite his assertion that the trouble  in Kashmir was “not because  of governance or poor quality of governance,” the  way situation  spiraled out of control  and the army had to be called in,  showed that  somewhere Chief Minister had missed the real point. He had not only missed reading the pulse of the people but also  grasp the  variety  of reasons that had come to cause and  stoke the trouble. One of them was  the performance or non-performance of his government, where  those in power want to stick to it and those out of it want to get in. If the situation is bad and alarming for them today, it would be all hunky dory  if they are taken into the ministry. The matter for the parties like  National Conference and Congress is  how close or how far are they from being sworn-in-as ministers  at the Raj Bhavan. If they were so concerned about the situation,  they should have  moved among the people, why they expected Chief Minister do everything for them. Some of them were seasoned politicians who had seen many ups and downs in the history  of Kashmir. If Chief Minister was not listening to them,  that in no way was stopping them from going to their constituents.

PCC president Saif-ud-Din Soz boasted that Congress has enrolled five lakh members in the Kashmir Valley  and Congress was strong as  never before. One per cent of five lakh is  5,000. But there was not a single  Congressman  to be seen in the Valley, visiting the homes of the  victims of violence. Soz was  visible in his statements, meeting one after another union minister , and his rival in the party  Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was  watching the  valley in flames from a safe distance in Delhi.

But, the primary responsibility lies with the government in setting its own house in order and bringing peace and basic amenities to the people. Others have been able to take advantage of the situation  because it left the gaps open. Those gaps  were filled by the forces that wanted  violent forces to take centre stage and  provoke an extreme reaction from the government.

  The admission that his image has been dented and he is a bad politician  and needs to  interact more with the people at different levels and that his ministers were at liberty to call him any time  is not going to help the matters. He needs to act.  The people are angry, frustrated. They need  comfort  and not the words aired through  TV channels .

Speaking through the people without the credibility only undermines the credibility of the speaker.  A  reading of 1975-1977 chapter of the Indian history  is enough evidence of that when all the propaganda machinery  worked for one individual and Indira was called India  by  then Prime Minister’s yes men like,  D K Baruah. But the people were angry and they did manifest their anger. The silence  of the curfew-bound streets and  blaring of propaganda  through one or the other channel is not indicative of the situation being under control.

 Peoples' Democratic Party  is the main opposition party in Kashmir. It  has  taken a ruse of everything having gone wrong and  it cannot step in to correct the course.  Sure enough, this was the argument used by this party when the Amarnaath land row was at its peak and it had  blasted  the then its own coalition Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad for  creating a quagmire, never acknowledging that it had its own role to play in what  unfolded in Kashmir that time. It played on the religious sentiments of the people, and saw a  dividend in it. It could raise its tally in the Assembly from 16 to 21. It’s the same politics at work.

No political party, howsoever big may be the size of the mess, can shy away from playing its role. The PDP has confined itself , again taking the excuse that, it as a mainstream party, has been marginalized by the acts of  omission and commission by Chief Minister . 

The PDP should  have seen it beyond the individual perspective. Its role certainly is not to criticize one individual day in and day out. It’s time for PDP president Mehboobaa Mufti and her party, to reach out to the people, too. It did make some efforts but thereafter has  shown itself   in the running away  mode.

She didn’t want to be seen   with Omar Abdullah  for his  “unilateral”  steps  in  tackling  the situation. In a  democracy,  opposition   has no less a responsibility than the  government.  The men in power or opposition are  behaving as individuals and not as leaders. An endless  tragedy !

Lastupdate on : Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST