Governance, not Politics!

Most of the political leaders in Kashmir from all the”streams” talk about the “Political” problem. The mainstream leaders talk aboutsafeguarding the individuality and unique character of Kashmiris by defendingArticle 370 and Article 35-A and also plead for the restoration of totalautonomy as envisaged in the basic instrument of accession signed by theerstwhile Maharaja and the Governor General of India. They fail to admit thatit is basically they who diluted and compromised the autonomy for their ownpersonal interests. They never really defended the special status. They did notmind even when their autonomy resolution was thrown into a dustbin!

The other stream is for “Azadi”! They are not prepared to doanything else except keep on struggling by various means for their demand ofultimate “Azadi”! Everything else, according to them, will dilute the demandfor “Azadi”. The main basis for agitation is the condition in the accessiondocument and the international declaration through UN Security Councilregarding the ultimate settlement of the dispute through free will of thepeople exercised through a plebiscite held under UN auspices. Ironically, whilestruggling for “Azadi”, they expect the government which they do not recognizeto be “legal” to improve all the living conditions. There has never been anyvoluntary attempt from their side to force the “illegal” government to improvethe fast deteriorating civic conditions or to start a movement of their own onvoluntary basis to do so!

   

During the last 70 years there have been many upheavals,agitations and even three wars about the ultimate fate of the State. More thana couple of hundred thousand people have been killed, thousands have beenmaimed and disabled and over 10,000 have disappeared without a trace. The worsthas happened after the start of the nineties of last century when an armeduprising by the local youth supported from across took place. Because of totalban on free expression, there has been rise in militancy and violence. Due to astate of uncertainty, the normal civic life has been adversely affected.Corruption in every sphere has become a norm. The ruling politicians have shownthe worst form of nepotism. At present almost a million youth, highly educated,are unemployed because of the wrong policies of the ruling politiciansespecially their attempts at glamourizing white collar jobs right to the lowestlevel instead of inducing the spirit of entrepreneurship among the youth. It isa pity that almost seven hundred thousand outsiders are doing jobs which shouldnormally have been done by locals. This involves drain of rupees forty croresper day as their wages to outside state which should have been the earning oflocals!

By all accounts the valley is in a mess. It will take a longtime and a strong will to sort out these things. One fails to understand whythe citizens and intellectuals should wait for the ultimate solution to sortout our day to day living conditions? The most immediate task of the rulingelite of whatever party is holding the reins of power is to improve the day today living conditions. Good governance with sincere, responsive and activeadministration is the need of the hour. In almost every front whether civilsociety, or the government, Kashmir is in a total state of anarchy. In truesense, left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Everybody tries toescape from facing the real situation in every aspect of life. Let us firsttake apprehension of an impending flood. Most of the experts have predictedthat we may get a repeat of the 2014 flood as practically nothing has been doneto prevent the same by all concerned. In spite of the fact that a very high levelcommittee has been constituted by the government under the Chief Executive, theprogress on the ground is abnormally slow. No preventive measures can beeffectively implemented on the ground unless the work is taken up on a warfooting with round the clock monitoring. All the concerned organisations seemto have become impotent both in execution and monitoring. One only needs totake a walk on the embankments of the flood spill over channel from MehjoorNagar to By-pass Bridge to practically know the ground situation. TheGovernment has now constituted a committee to investigate the bungling indredging! The State High Court has asked the Government to put up the FloodMitigation Action Plan in the next hearing of the PIL filed on the subject. Godonly can help us now!

Now take the disgusting condition of all the valley roadsand above everything else the pathetic state of the National Highway, Kashmir’sonly lifeline! We are more interested in fly overs! The first fly over wasmeant to smoothen travel of VIPs to the Civil Secretariat. The other fly overis to provide a smooth passage to the airport to the VIPs notwithstanding theimpact it would have on the population en route! Again it is an ad hocwhimsical decision. There are two parallel roads which could have beensufficiently widened with an extra bridge at Rambagh to have through passage toAirport. The last one is supposed to be a grade separator at Tourist ReceptionCentre to take care of traffic mess. However, it is allegedly meant tostreamline the movement of VIPs to Civil Secretariat. According to latestreports its opening has made no difference to the traffic mess at the TouristReception Centre! The most annoying aspect of these huge construction projectscausing immense inconvenience to the citizens is the hurry in starting these onad hoc basis. Seeing the entire mess one can only suggest that the politiciansfrom all streams should leave politics aside for some time and concentrate ongood governance to at least improve the day to day living conditions of thepeople! In fact, in a State Assembly election held some time back, the slogangiven was “Roti. Kapda aur Makaan”! The same needs to be repeated now andwhenever an election to the State Assembly is held in future!

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