My way or the highway!

A day after the Supreme Court dismissed a plea challengingJ&K government’s order restricting civilian traffic on the nationalhighway, the state government relaxed the restrictions it had imposed givingprimacy to the movement of security forces. Strange.

The movement of security forces had been necessitatedneither by external aggression nor internal rebellion but to democraticallyelect representatives of people. Almost 80 per cent of the eligible votersboycotted the exercise. Ironic!  

   

Two days after the Banihal highway was closed for civiliantraffic, the Uri route for cross-LoC trade was stopped, ostensibly formaintenance and repair of “Aman setu” (“peace bridge”, how symbolic!). Barely aweek later, the cross LoC trade itself was suspended. Coincidence?

A day later, after relaxing the restrictions, the NationalHighway Authority of India, starts levying a toll on vehicles on the samehighway. Happenstance.

All these measures need to be seen in the context ofconcerted efforts to rescind Article 35A and abrogate Article 370. Seen thus,these decisions are neither strange, nor coincidental nor by chance or byaccident. But by design. A pincer is being constructed with political pressurefrom above and economic squeeze from below.

It is impossible to miss the symbolism that goes beyondroads and routes. These are mind games that flank the underlying power play.The message is too direct and obvious to be missed: My way or the highway!  This is the new Kashmir policy.

The closing down of the trade route is a tangential assaulton the constitutional special status. J&K is the only state that has alocal trade route with a neighbouring country. All other border states haveinternational trade routes. Not just that, this road and route was accessibleonly to the “state subjects”; a category that is under threat of obliteration.It was a privilege as well as a differentiator. And in the new paradigm ofnationalistic politics these must go.

The blocking of roads and suspension of routes are notvanilla policy decisions; they are meant to send a message to the people insideand outside the state.  

It is not just about controlling the highway or the roads.It is about controlling the narrative. For there are small but significanthistories etched in the geographies of these roads. Those who decided onrestricting the access of civilians on the Banihal highway, may not even knowthat this route to Kashmir, up until 1922, was meant only for the ruling elite:the royal family. It seems to have come a full circle about a hundred yearslater!

Thus far, in the thirty years of insurgency, the highway hasnever politicised except briefly during the Amarnath land row in 2008. Withthis provocative gesture of security control, the highway stands paved withpoliticisation. A new beginning has been made. The highway has been used as atool of domination; now it will be used as a scene of protestation. This willbe the new history of highways.

At what cost?

What links producers to markets, wholesalers to retailers,workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals? Roads! In amanner of plain speak roads are vital to any development agenda. The fact isthat roads are arteries through which the economy pulses. Not that it mattersfor now, eventually the jackboots will pinch the foot that tramples. 

The valley of Kashmir, whatever else it might be politicallyand strategically, it is also an economic unit and a market. The total incomesgenerate this year by the J&K economy will be Rs 1.57 lakh crore, which is0.85 per cent of the national income. In US dollar terms, the state domesticproduct, estimated on income originating basis, is $ 22 billion making J&Kequivalent to Estonia, a republic in Northern Europe. 

J&K contributes 10 per cent of the total incomegenerated by neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.  Assuming a savings rate of 20 per cent (i.esavings as a percentage of state income which is around 30 per centnationally), the market size of the state is Rs 1.2 lakh crore. This is theconsumption of both final and intermediate goods. On conservative estimates(less than the national per capita consumption), the final consumptionexpenditure alone will be in the range of Rs 80,000 to Rs 1,00,00 crore.

With an import intensity of 0.60, we are looking at importsfrom neighbouring states of around Rs 4,000 crore per month. The 10,000vehicles which ply every hour on the highway are carriers of this commerce andlivelihood outside of J&K. Not to make too fine a point of economicinterdependence, if the multiplier is taken to be 3, (RBI estimates that 1%increase in spending raises incomes by 3.9%), then we are talking of an incomegeneration dynamic of Rs 12,000 crore in the neighbouring economicecosystem.  Reverse multipliers may notbe as strong but do operate. 

How does this operate on the ground? Take the case of eggs.On last count the state consumed 1.2 billion eggs annually. Of which only onethird is produced locally. At Rs 5 an egg, Rs 600 crore was spend on eggs, ofwhich Rs 400 crore became the income of poultry businesses in Punjab andHaryana. Annually, 7.5 crore kilograms of poultry meat, about Rs 1,000 crore,is consumed. Of this, Rs 500 crore is income for poultry business inneighbouring states.  

Annually 50,000 tonnes of mutton is consumed every year. AtRs 400 per kilogram, it is an annual business turnover of Rs 2,000 crore(factoid: assuming that all this mutton is consumed in the valley, all that thevalleyites consume per capita per day is around 30 grams, which is not muchcompared to the gluttonous reputation we have!). In physical terms, about 11lakh sheep and goat are imported, mostly from Rajasthan.  

The point being that the size of the valley market may besmall from the macroeconomic perspective of the Indian economy. But for a thousandsof suppliers from outside of the valley, the size is substantial.

More importantly, the vehicles that ply the highway carrynot just goods but also a network of trade and business relationships. Trade isa precursor of trust, of bonds of livelihood and shared prosperity.

The horticulturists of Shopian and the commissioning agentsof Azadpur have for decades shared good times and survived bad timestogether.  These trucks that ply thehighway are carriers of trust and credit. These have proved to be the strongestlinkages between valley and the mainland. It is these that are gettingdisturbed, if not snapped just yet.

With the NIA nibbling at the heels of trade and business inthe valley, scrutinising their transactions and accounts, it potentially opensup their business partners in rest of the country to questioning. No one wouldwant to trade with them anymore for the fear of transactional enquiry. Alreadytraders are seeing their working capital requirements increasing as theirdealers and suppliers want advance full payment before they supply the goods.Earlier these would be delivered on credit; on trust.

More than the goods trade, it is the disengaging of thebusiness networks that will not only make the valley even more insular but willisolate it further. In doing what they are doing, the Government of India seemsto have been hit by a bout of road rage.

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