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Out of sync with ground reality

Kashmir Times. Dated: 8/24/2016 10:25:04 AM

CM's outburst reveals a lack of understanding about Kashmir crisis and her inability to connect to the masses

On Monday, when Jammu and Kashmir's chief minister Mehbooba Mufti was talking about Centre and state government jointly co-operating to introduce confidence building measures and initiate a dialogue to reach out to people, New Delhi was busy sending the marching orders for BSF troops to Kashmir to deal with the situation militarily. In the last 46 days, ever since Burhan Wani's death that triggered unrest and protests and extremely brutal ways of handling such anguish and anger, the Centre has been sending in more and more forces. With the Amarnath yatra coming to a close last week, the additional forces deployed there would be sent in to civilian areas. This is neither a dialogue nor a confidence building measure. It is just another step to control the voices of protest and dissent with an iron hand. Irrespective of Mehbooba's flip flops over her knowledge about the encounter in which Burhan Wani was killed, as executive head of the state she would surely be apprised of the moves to send in additional forces. The actions certainly do not match this bit of rhetoric about dialogue and reaching out to people. The problem appears to stem not from sheer inefficiency and inability to take charge of things but a poor understanding of the ongoing situation and a poor grasp of the ground realities. The thrust of what the chief minister said revealed that, pretty much like the Centre, she too was viewing the issue from the lens of development. She spoke about economy being in shambles, education sector suffering, tourism industry suffering and ridiculously about Salman Khan not choosing Kashmir as the destination for shooting his next film.
Mehbooba did speak about civilian casualties, of children being killed and maimed. However, leave alone a word of condemnation for the kind of disproportionate use of force being used by the security agencies, her concern for the dead and injured people came without an introspection as to why they were being killed and maimed, whether there was a genuine grievance and anger that brought them to the streets in the first place. Instead, she delegitimized that anger by invoking the 5 percent theory - of few people instigating violence and making the other 95 percent suffer. Such statements reflect the poverty of understanding of the present situation. Clearly, she is either not willing to accept the ground reality or she is papering it over with rhetoric of make believe. In neither case would it benefit the state or even her own party. It would serve the chief minister well to ask crucial questions. If the problem is only with 5 percent of people, why is it that a huge size of a military contingent has not been able to resolve it miliraily so far? Also, why young people today are risking their lives by coming out on the streets to protest, to pelt stones and in doing so facing bullets and pellets? No instigation can be enough if there isn't an amount of genuine anger for them to be pushed to exposing their lives to extreme danger.
The genesis of the problem is political and it has to be responded with politically. As chief minister of the state, and owing to the dependence of this chair on the benevolence of New Delhi, she may not have the mandate to reach out to the people politically. Her helplessness in the face of the rigidness of the Centre ruled by a right wing party is partly understandable. But she certainly is in a position to keep channels of negotiations open with the Centre. Kashmir is up in flames, like never before, and deserves emergent attention. Instead of taking out time to come to Jammu to inaugurate a sewage plant that could have waited a few more days, she should have been in Delhi, using her power and ability as chief minister to engage with New Delhi and lobby for a more adequate response and a more political to the present crisis. But first of all, she will have to grapple with the truth and the ground realities, howsoever harsh and unpalatable they may seem.