Just a fleeting look at the newspapers in Kashmir, and the worry about how the things shape up in coming days sounds real. Though it's true that the data can be placed in one particular way to offer the desired results; those who prefer pressing the panic buttons would cherry pick the incidents that produce a grim effect. But sometimes things are so blatant that they never ask for any explanation. They force everyone to think about what is being said so loud and clear. It is this latter case that applies to the contents we come across in the newspapers these days.
Refusing to succumb to any of the statements and policies of the government, unemployment stares into our face with increasing ferocity. And is this to be told that unemployment not only comes up with its own set of problems, but feeds into others as well. Then we live in a contested land where conflict is always a looming reality. Despite the announcements by the government and the public display of packages by the ruling parties, there has been no significant improvement on this count. True, that everyone cannot be employed in the government but does employment mean to get a job in the government only. The expansion of avenues for the younger generation so that they can eke out a decent living is actually what has to be done. What is done only adds to the problem. We have a crowd of youth employed as contractual lectures. And if anyone has to see how well this policy has worked, he should come to the Press Enclave and have a look at what the young people are doing these days. The hunger strike by these contractual lectures not only points towards the unjust working conditions that they have been put to, but also underlines the fault with our ways of dealing with unemployment. In the name of employing youth we produce a diseased generation of people who can only constitute, or contribute to, a problem. Turning a blind eye towards this problem drops a message; this is not the way government listens, or at an individual level, this is not the way one can live. One feeds to social crime and another to the political chaos. And both are related by way of consequences. 
This is the case with our human resource and what is it that is happening to the natural resource. Despite much clamour over returning the hydroelectric projects and getting the due share on the electricity produced, nothing seems to work. The loot continues unabated. This too goes into the public mind and the accumulation is not a good sign for our future.
Now take the scene at political level. Iron hand doesn't always work. This has been so consistently proved in Kashmir. And last summer it was as if the government must learn the lesson this time. But it has not. What resulted in the last years' groundswell is present in Kashmir in every detail. For God sake can someone tell us why it won't happen in future! That joke of an exercise called interlocutors didn't yield even a feel-good-nothing. The statements from Union and State governments exhibiting a strong sense of urgency last year to do something about Kashmir have dissolved in the mouths like the candy-floss.
The loss of hope in a common man that anything good is going to come about from anything said or done by the government these days is an unmistakable allusion towards a gathering storm. And in Kashmir when storm gathers, it only gathers to break. 

Lastupdate on : Sun, 7 Aug 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 7 Aug 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 8 Aug 2011 00:00:00 IST