J&K is a place of many features, some might call them special features. A survey of all such features would finally tell us that there is hardly anything special in it as these things are littered around the world. It applies to politics, craft, society, and natural beauty. But one thing is really special, and we stand out for this. It is called the Darbar Move. As the world moves to a technological space where everything is present all the time everywhere, there is a place where files are physically loaded in trucks and moved hundreds of kilometres away, twice every year.
Then the officers move, the staff moves, and with them the families and the associated population. A person living in Srinagar, barely a kilometre away from the secretariat or any other office that moves to Jammu in the winter months, has to travel hundreds of kilometres to Jammu, book a room for himself for weeks together to follow his file. And it doesn’t happen just once. In fact till the time the case is settled, and it spans years, this poor fellow has to shift multiple times to Jammu. Same applies to the people in Jammu. Imagine the plight of such people. One wonders why it doesn’t fall in the category of human rights violation! For many reasons governance in J&K, pure administration of civilian affairs, has become captive to the politics that has been thrust on J&K. In this oppressive system people of all the regions have suffered. Many a time voices have been raised to address this unnatural way of governance. But each time the politics come in the way. Had there been any sincere attempt made to deal with this predicament, the problem would have been solved by now. And in the times when technology has taken over everything, even the political system are yielding, we must open the case up again and make an arrangement where people are liberated from this ordeal. Even if the political status quo is maintained on this, at least make sure that no files are moved from one place to another, and people are not made to shuttle between Srinagar to Jammu for their routine works. Our intelligence couldn’t help us all these decades, so place the matter before AI; may be it comes up with an arrangement far more efficient.