What ails Kashmir? Making a link between the dying babies and Hurriyat infighting, may apparently sound to be preposterous.   What seems to be ridiculous actually is a disgusting reality.  Loss of lives threatens the very existence of the people; a lingering Kashmir dispute is reason for the unfathomable political instability. People dying for whatever reasons---devoured by a conflict or due to medical negligence--and the pseudo leaders failing repeatedly, is all due to material greed and perennial inefficiency.          
The superficial understanding of the seemingly hopeless situation is bound to make one angry. However once the grim realities seeps deep down, inevitably  one feels agonizingly sorry about the collective state of affairs. Pointing fingers on everybody else smacks a self-righteous attitude.  Nobody in Kashmir can claim to be aboveboard; we all contribute to the making of our failures. And venting the innate feelings is process of introspection; this may lead to a catharsis. The humbling realization that our failures are collective may inculcate pensive feelings. Moreover our stark collective failures make us to rue, what went wrong, how and where?       
The unfortunate infant deaths may have prompted the rulers in panic to push the alarm buttons.  Actually the deaths per se have not stirred up the authorities to take stock of the aggravating situation; the unavoidably disturbing headlines have woken up the rulers from their deep slumber. Had media continued to maintain the usual criminal silence on the day-to-day but in fact critical issues, it was all hunky-dory for the doctors, administrators and the minsters. Almost same number of deaths occurred during the corresponding period last year and probably year before that, but the callous authorities didn’t deemed it fit to make a beeline of the children hospital as they are forced to do now. Moral of the story, huge deaths are not enough to prick the conscience of the rulers, an adverse media converge only makes them uncomfortable. Do these numb and conscienceless people still deserve to be called as human beings?
A mere visit to any of the government medical facility is enough to expose the pathetic condition of the health services in the state. The medical community in their vain defence describes the structural deficiencies reason behind the present mess. Conversely rulers like to emphasise that there is no dearth of resources. Where the problem does lies then? Administrators’ lacks the capacity to fully utilise purposefully the financial resources besides the inefficient and corrupt doctors are unable to treat the suffering people satisfactorily. Who mans the hospitals and who prescribes the spurious medicines? SKIMS publishing the list of its senior doctors in the newspapers as probable offenders and requesting people to report any of its doctors indulging in private practice as a cognizable crime, sums up the rot. Messiahs depicted as potential criminals lay bare open the enterprise of inefficiency and material greed. What is to be explained, isn’t it the time to hang our head in shame? 
Infighting within the Hurriyat leadership is disgusting. But washing of dirty linen has nothing to do with any ideology. A section of APHC leadership is keen to explore out- of-box solutions when they have lost all the credibility and possess no bargaining chips. Agreed that the changed geopolitics demands a change of strategy, read between the lines the change of tactic clearly implies meek surrender. The best time to work for creative solutions was in the beginning of this millennium. The inefficient leadership driven with sole criterion of self promotion failed to grab the fleeting opportunities. The time has rendered them completely irrelevant, and any change of strategy will hardly matter now. The king-size egos but petty minds have no else to blame but their material greed and worst kind of incompetence, for squandering all the opportunities. 
Kashmir is an intractable problem that involves external intricacies, majority here believes that more than any indigenous effort; external elements will help more to resolve the problem. This is a wrong notion; a determined honest effort will only help to find an amicable solution. Perhaps during the 2010 mass uprising the then NSA MK Narayanan astonished many observers in Kashmir with his statement that “Kashmir will be back to normalcy in six months time”. In the height of uprising many of us described this statement an act of bravado.  Why Narayanan was right and many of us proved utterly wrong? Probably he was aware of our weaknesses? We again proved to be fickle minded rather worst materialistic people. Instead of remaining loyal to our sentiments we came out in droves to vote.  Materialism and persistent inefficiency ails Kashmir.  The depth of material greed and inefficiency makes many of us hopeless; there is no chance that we can redeem ourselves.  In real sense discovering the reasons behind our ailment should make us hopeful. We just have to overcome the temptations and shun laziness. Can we? 

(Feedback at firdoussyed@yahoo.com)

Lastupdate on : Fri, 25 May 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 25 May 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 IST