It’s election time. Jammu and Kashmir has its owninterpretation of these timings, and ever since the 1987 polls, the verycomplexion of voting and the trust in the election process has transformeddrastically. Over all these years the mood is such that many believe thatvoting is some fruitless exercise or it stands opposite to what they call their”struggle” stands for. The elections are not all about politics. There are manydimensions that we overlook as we are weighed down by the politics in our internalthoughts and are afraid of speaking about the larger issues.
For a moment if we say that J&K is not all aboutpolitics. It raises many eyebrows and one can be punished for suggesting that.The make-up of our mind set has been influenced by the environment in which welive and what all we hear.
The politics is neither mainstream nor separatist. Politicsis a vehicle through which one can peddle grievances and seek redress to them.It can be anything, ranging from water supply to the corruption in the systemthat has over ruled the merit and rewarded the incompetent.
Two examples come to my mind. Both representing the opposite of each other. National Conference had boycotted the parliamentary elections in 1996 for the party was not getting any firm assurance on its demand for the restoration of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir.
Farooq Abdullah, the party president, was leading the campaign with all the passion. He was breathing the cause of autonomy 24×7, and there were cynics who thought that he was wasting his time as clock is not going to be reversed to pre-1953 days when the state was having its sovereignty over all matters except for defence, communications and foreign affairs.
The cynicism among his critics deepened d when the then Prime Minister P V Narsimha Rao could not live up to his word,” Short of ‘Azadi’ , sky is the limit.”
There was scepticism all around . Then came the United FrontGovernment headed by H D Deve Gowda . He said, ” J&K is a special state andit deserves a special treatment.” The Communist Party stalwart Harkishen SinghSurjeet supplemented him , and among others he was asked by his staunch rivalMufti Mohammad Sayeed to contest thepolls.
It was politics , so thought everyone , who watched the turnof events . Farooq Abdullah relented , and National Conference participated inpolls.
What happened thereafter is interesting . Not that whatFarooq used to tell his people that how he was surprised when his children toldhim on his arrival from abroad that how National Conference has won over atwo-third majority in the polls . There is something more important thathappened and it has not got the kind of attention that it deserved.
Between 1990 and 1996, the mass copying in examinationswas a norm . The students would not goto schools, teachers were also irregular – it won’t be wrong to say the firstthing they looked in newspapers in themorning was a call for general strike by one or the other group on one issue orthe other. The whole generation was getting addicted to no schools, copying inexams and the 100 per cent success rate.
Farooq said, “I will not allow this to happen” He took his ministers into confidence and declared a war on mass copying in exams. There should be genuine test of the abilities of the students and the genuine results as well.
Among others, who helped him in eradicating mass copying were then minister of state for home Ali Mohammad Sagar, now NC General Secretary. Sagar helped in mobilising police to mount strict vigil at the examination centres . That brought down the scale of copying to a large extent.
That was no mean achievement ,given the challenges and the threats that existed in post-1996 era.Much of the attention of the government was taken by the tragedies – massacresand encounters that used to take place at a regular basis.
After NC could not regain the majority in the 2002 elections, his successor Mufti Mohammad Sayeed did what was considered unthinkable. He removed the road cordons and ordered that there should be free movement of the civilians in the zones that had been declared out of bounds for the common people.
After many years , the couples could sleep in their bed rooms without fear of any midnight knocks. He fought the element of fear with his bold decisions.
These two examples show that the politics has social justiceside too. It is an incredibly important part of civic engagement.