OPinionatED
or
VOX POPULI
by
Aam Admi
Issue: 170 Date: 03.10.2016
Contents:
1. The
Way Forward In Kashmir
2.
Congress Party
Struggling To Remain Relevant
3. The Wrong Emphasis On Poverty Alleviation & Economic
Growth
The Way Forward In Kashmir
We
need to look at how Kashmir has been handled since the Modi-led BJP government
came to power in the Centre. In an attempt to keep the Congress - National
Conference at bay the BJP had decided to go in for an opportunistic alliance
with the PDP to form the government in Kashmir. There was no ideological basis
for the alliance and with the few seats that the BJP get in Jammu and looking
at the PDP strength in the Valley a marriage of convenience was hurriedly
cobbled up. The squabbling between the two partners post-elections continued
though it did not reach a breaking point since both the parties realised that
they had more to lose in separating than in staying together. Then the
PDP supremo, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed died and that event really set the cat among
the pigeons for the alliance and by extension into Kashmir. Mehbooba Mufti
anointed successor to lead the PDP
by Mufti Saheb himself had cold feet on two issues. The first was sitting on
the CM's chair and putting the crown of thorns on her head since being CM
of Kashmir was nobed of roses. The
second was the alliance with the BJP. Thus after an extended period of
dilly-dallying explained away as the time of mourning that Mehbooba Mufti
needed, she accepted the challenge of becoming the first woman Chief Minister
of Kashmir.
The
time between Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's death and Mehbooba Mufti
accepting to become the Chief Minister was when Kashmir had essentially no
government. This interregnum after a relatively extended period of peace
was what was taken advantage of by the separatists to push through their agenda
and foment local unrest and encourage terrorist activity from across the
border. Thus Mehbooba Mufti had from almost Day 1 to face
problems relating to either local law and order incidents involving
stoning or cross-border terrorist activity and the continued over-reaction of
the army and para-military forces in handling such activity. It was not settled
times in Kashmir and the burning fuse was lit when Burhan Wani was killed in
the encounter and the State immediately went up in flames thereafter. Close to
a hundred days of disturbances followed with almost the same number of
Kashmiris killed in this period and the unrest leading to disarray in the lives
of innocent citizens. Is this what the BJP calls Kashmir being an integral part
of India? Does Kashmir not deserve the calm and peace that other Indian
citizens largely enjoy? Do the Kashmiri not deserve to go to schools and the
youth to colleges in the pursuit of a better life? Kashmir was near normal
almost six months ago when tourists had again started to return. But then what
happened thereafter? Does the BJP have an answer to this question having been
part of the government in Kashmir? Does the BJP not have a responsibility
therefore by virtue of being a part of the government to ensure normalcy as
close as it is possible for the Kashmiris to go about their day to day lives?
Let
us step back a moment to almost two years ago when Narendra Modi took over the
reins of government with the BJP getting an astounding absolute majority. This
should have encouraged Modi and
his government to try and resolve the problems in Kashmir and bring some
normalcy to the State. If based on some of his utterances lately after meetings
with Mehbooba Mufti and if he intends to get down to brass tacks then he has to
follow some basic general principles. As it
is known Kashmir has been a festering problem defying a solution because of the
machinations of the separatists residing in the State, the activities of
terrorists from across the border in Pakistan and PoK with quite some
assistance from local people and finally the partly brainwashed local
population who feel that India has given them a raw deal and schizophrenically
inclined to independence for Kashmir or to be aligned with Pakistan. The
situation has got further complicated with some insensitive and intransigent
reactions of our armed forces both military and paramilitary based in Kashmir
categorised as human rights excesses by the local population and desirable
action to ensure law and order by the armed forces.
Thus in this given situation any new government taking guard at the Centre should have accorded top priority to resolving the Kashmir tangle in winning over the hearts and minds of the local population. This more so when it ventured to hold the reins of government in the State albeit jointly with the PDP. However, strangely the BJP including its top brass refused to accept this responsibility and tended to ignore the reality in Kashmir and preferred to play second fiddle to the PDP in the government. Even Narendra Modi must accept the blame for not giving enough attention to Kashmir being completely obsessed with his foreign trips and when he fleetingly did with great immaturity it was to drop in for a cup of 'chai' with Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. The ingenuous approach that Modi adopted to one would assume to break the ice that had settled more thickly than at the Arctic circle in the 69 years of Indo-Pak relations because of Kashmir has been proven now to be ill-conceived if not completely immature. Where Modi should have concentrated on the people of Kashmir he went across the border to find a solution to a problem of what he calls of his own people and an integral part of India.
The people of Kashmir need to
live a life of normalcy and not be perennially barricaded either because there
is a bundh on the roads or firing or stone throwing. This kind of unrest
disrupts the common population of going about their daily lives like buying
essential necessities, going to school or college and office and with
businesses shut there is a strain on the availability of goods and services.
Considering the assumption that Narendra Modi and the BJP want normalcy to be
there in Kashmir and taking off from the statement that Mehbooba Mufti made
recently that 95% of the Kashmiris want peace, we should withdraw the armed
forces from all civilian areas of Kashmir and repeal the AFSPA. This will build
the confidence in the Kashmiri people that the government is serious about
ushering in normalcy. At the same time it should be made clear that no nonsense
will be tolerated and those that are not supportive of normalcy returning will
be dealt with severely according to prevailing laws.
The separatists of different
hues that exist in Kashmir should be clearly told that they should toe the line
otherwise they should ship out to where they think that their interests are
best served. However, as long as they are in Kashmir no separatist activity of
any kind will be tolerated and they will be dealt strictly as per prevailing
laws in the event they contravene any of the laws or act in a manner that will
encourage public unrest. Given the earlier background of these leaders if they
fail to listen to reason, they should be progressively put under house arrest,
their movements restricted and passports withdrawn.
As for dealing with terrorists
who sneak in from across the border, our army and paramilitary forces should
beef up their strength and capabilities to man, patrol and intercept anyone
from sneaking in and causing mayhem in Kashmir. In the event of further attacks
by terrorists we should in the manner as we did in case of the Uri attack
retaliate and take out the terrorists camps on the other side of the border as
long as such strikes are militarily feasible. In this manner we should sanitise
a 2 Km. swathe of area on the Pakistan and PoK side of the border and the LoC
and make it free of terrorist camps. This will then ensure that we get respect
from Pakistan that we mean what we say and are capable of enforcing our way in
the event of Pakistan not amenable to our requests to control or stop terrorist
activity either by they themselves or through ‘non-State actors’.
This is the only way forward if
Narendra Modi and his government wants to bring in lasting peace in Kashmir.
There is a great deal of risk involved in the above proposition but like they
say – Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained – and in the event it works then the
greatest gift for India would be the Kashmiri people rejecting any of
Pakistan’s interventions in Kashmir.
Congress Party Struggling To Remain Relevant
The Congress
political party is clearly in disarray and losing relevance by the day. It is
time that the Gandhis recognised this and took some concrete corrective action
in re-vitalising the party. With Sonia Gandhi more often than not indisposed
and Rahul Gandhi concentrating on sound bytes with his flippant and superficial
comments against Narendra Modi which are going stale by the day, the leadership
should realise that it is time the Congress raised substantive issues of
governance to remain a political force in the country.
The Wrong
Emphasis On Poverty Alleviation & Economic Growth
Arvind
Panagariya Vice-Chairman, Niti Aayog stated recently that urbanization is the
solution to poverty alleviation, quoting BRICS countries ratios of urbanization
and wanting to catch up. This is nothing but being supportive of land sharks
and the real-estate lobby sacrificing the interests of the aam admi. The
hypothesis here is to initiate large scale migration to the cities from our
rural areas. It is a well known fact that communities are best prosperous and
happy where their means of livelihood is close at hand. Thus if our rural
communities are assured gainful income from the produce that they grow in their
fields or in the businesses that they run to support the agricultural activity,
they will decidedly have nothing to seek from moving to our urban centres. The
quality of life is definitely much better in the rural areas than in the slums
that they would have to largely migrate to in the cities. In the BRICS countries other than in
Russia which is a somewhat unknown factor rapid urbanization has resulted in a
strain on the cities leading to the creation of ghetto-like slums not very much
unlike Dharavi that we have in Mumbai. Surely this is not the quality of life
that we would like to offer to those who will migrate to our cities. This kind
of logic is being perpetrated by the UN also which for the last decade or more
has been pushing the earlier UPA government and now the present government to
encourage migration from rural areas to the cities. The premise here being that
it will lead to an impetus to improved development. In fact, quite the
contrary, it will lead to negative development. The Indian cities will break
under the stress of this large incoming population from the rural areas and the
consequent demand on essential services like water, electricity, sewerage,
health services and education will undergo a breakdown or a distortion in
supply. We seem sometimes to act in contradictory ways since the trend for
supply of electricity and potable water is to charge consumers more and more.
Will the newly migrated rural folk be able to pay for these essential
necessities? If not, like the old saying are we thrusting them from the boiling
pot into the fire? There is no problem with migration that is voluntary but we
should not deliberately engineer it.
Thus all things considered it is best that we
allow the rural community to remain where they are and involve in agriculture
activity which will engender better availability of food and also spur growth
rates of the economy. It has been a known fact that on the back of a good
monsoon whenever our agriculture production has seen a reasonable growth, the
Indian economy as a whole has done well. The reason being that more money in
the hands of the rural people has led to a sharp increase in the demand for consumer
goods, consumer durables and also automobiles and 2-wheelers like motorcycles
and scooters. This has been the reason that close to two decades now the MNC’s
involved in consumer goods have been concentrating on the rural market to
secure double digit growth for their existing products, considering that the
urban markets for these products are seeing a saturation. Even the late
President Kalam had emphasized many a time that the future growth of the
country’s economy lies in the rural areas and it is important that we
concentrate on improving the services in these areas. Thus the Niti Aayog
toeing the UN’s line is contradictory to local reality. This is all the more
since if we encourage large scale migration from the rural areas to our cities,
the agriculture sector already reeling under shortage of manpower will be
deprived further of hands to support the growth of food for the Indian
population. Long term this will result in shortage of agricultural production
leading us to become more a food importing country than we are today. We all
remember the days of the 1960’s when we had to manage with PL480 aid from the
USA and on import of substandard rice from Thailand. WE should not bring back
those days for our grandchildren and negate whatever benefits we derived from
the Green Revolution.
Another wrong premise that is going the rounds
of our economists is that if rural income goes up then it will lead to a spurt
in inflation particularly for food. This is retrograde thinking since our
farmers deserve to get the best prices for their produce and no consumer minds
the increase of market support prices for their produce. The windfall profits
in agricultural items is made by the intermediaries like the wholesalers and
retailers where a mark-up of more than 2 to 3 times the price is imposed. That
is where the control has to take place. Again the economists as above suffer
from the mistaken belief that with farmers getting better prices their quality
of life will improve thus enhancing the local demand for vegetables, milk,
chicken etc. and thus limiting the amount of these items available for sale in
urban markets leading to a runaway increase in the prices of these items. So the choice is clear, we either consciously
deprive the farmer of better prices so that his lot remains as existing or
worse or we increase the factors of production that will lead to a large-scale
increase in the production of these items for both the rural and urban markets.
Any right thinking person will definitely go for the second option since the
overall well-being of the country and prosperity is in this option.
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