From
alienation with the government of India the
people of Kashmir descended into the abyss
of violence brought on by militancy. Parvez
Dewan, resident commissioner of Indian
Kashmir, sheds light on what is happening in
the Valley Upon the Sheikh's(Sheikh
Abdullah's) death, the National Conference
unanimously elected his son, Dr Farooq
Abdullah, as chief minister...
However, Dr Farooq's overwhelming majority
in the state assembly was of no use. From
the beginning of 1984, the local press was
full of reports that Delhi was trying to get
Dr Farooq's legislators to defect. On Sunday
July 2, 1984, Dr Farooq went to Gulmarg for
a couple of hours with his family and film
actress Shabana Azmi. During those few,
brief hours his brother-in-law, G.M. Shah,
was installed as the chief minister of the
state. Mr Shah and a few NC legislators had
joined forces with the state unit of the
Indian National Congress. Together they
managed to put together the number of
legislators required to get Dr Farooq
dismissed.
The government knew that there would be a
violent response from the people. So it
deployed paramilitary forces all over
Srinagar and some major towns. However, such
was the people's anger that the forces were
not sufficient to control the situation.
Between July 2 and the end of October, when
government offices shifted to Jammu for the
winter, several parts of Srinagar could only
be ruled by imposing curfew there.
Anti-India sentiments, which had almost
vanished in the nine preceding years, made a
modest comeback.
Alienation
Added to this was the feeling among Kashmiri
Muslims that the government of India was
discriminating against them in matters of
employment. G.N. Gauhar writes that in 1976,
"I convinced... (the then Union) Minister
for Information and Broadcasting about the
disproportionate bulk recruited from the
Kashmiri Pandit minority, constituting less
than five per cent of the entire population,
especially in the State branches of the I&B
Ministry." At that time, of the employees of
certain government of India departments in
Kashmir, 58 per cent were Kashmiri Pandits
and 36 per cent were Muslims. Of these 36
per cent, the biggest chunk, according to
Gauhar, were peons and others in the lowest
rungs.
Part of the explanation lay in the
difference in literacy levels. The tiny
Kashmiri Pandit community is almost entirely
literate. Literacy among the Muslims ranged
between Budgam's 18 per cent and Srinagar's
34 per cent even in 1981. In the period
covered by Gauhar (1947 to 1976) it was much
worse. And yet there can be no explanation
other than Gauhar's for the glaring
under-representation of Muslims in post
offices, in the office of the
accountant-general and several other central
departments. In several offices, recruitment
was made for considerations other than
merit.
In 1990, the greater part of the Kashmiri
Pandit community migrated from Kashmir to
Jammu and other parts of India. The working
of post offices in particular was crippled
for several years after that.
Employment under the government of India
accounts for a very small fraction of total
government employment. The overwhelming bulk
is under the state government. Gauhar notes
that "two high-powered committees headed by
retired chief justices of India were
appointed to probe and suggest measures when
the Pandit community alleged discrimination
(against the Hindus by the Muslim-majority
state government)."
* * * * *
The militarization of society: The
Mughals took all of three years (1586-89) to
establish their authority in Kashmir. They
banned the possession of all kinds of
weapons: including long kitchen knives. They
searched every house (especially basements)
where they thought they might find weapons.
By 1589, there wasn't a single weapon left
in private hands in the plains of Kashmir.
(The hills were similarly rid of weapons a
few years later.)
From 1589 to 1989 Kashmir was a uniquely
peaceful society. Then suddenly a friendly
neighbour flooded Kashmir with Kalashnikovs,
grenades and landmines. Very few of these
weapons were used against the various forces
of the government. As the statistics show,
most of those who were killed were ordinary
civilians, and not soldiers, policemen or
even militants.
Guns have been used to settle private
disputes in Pakistan's Punjab and Frontier
provinces for several centuries now. Even
Indian Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh have
known some armed violence between
individuals. The 1990s brought this culture
to Kashmir. Militants who had surrendered
themselves to the authorities, or had
otherwise given up militancy, became a major
social phenomenon. They knew how to use
guns. There was no shortage of ammunition.
So they started using their new found skills
to grab land, mow down forests, extort money
and kidnap young women.
Education: Because of disturbed
conditions at home, Kashmiri Muslim students
started seeking admission to colleges
outside the state. Those with good grades
went to Delhi. The children of the rich
favoured the medical and engineering
colleges of Manipal and Pune. Some even sent
their children to study at hole-in-the-wall
training institutes in Jammu, a city that
they would, till 1989, deride for its
educational and intellectual backwardness.
Districts that stayed away from militancy
reaped the peace dividend. The most notable
of these was overwhelmingly Muslim Kargil
(in Ladakh). Educational standards and
levels of literacy zoomed upwards in Jammu
and Kathua (both in Jammu province) as well
as in Leh and Kargil (both in Ladakh). Those
in militancy-hit Kashmir, too, improved, but
not as rapidly as in Jammu and Ladakh. The
relative ranks of four of the six districts
of the Valley, including Srinagar itself,
declined. The other two were static.
Budgam's position at the bottom, for
instance, remained unchanged.
Thanks to determined efforts by the
government, despite militancy the education
sector of the state as a whole moved up from
the 13th rank that it had occupied among 27
Indian states in 1991, to the 9th position
in 2001. This was the biggest upward
movement for any state in the 1990s.
Education, as we know, is very different
from literacy. In the latter regard the
state is still the second worst in the
country, with a literacy level (53.57 per
cent) only slightly higher than that of
Pakistan.
Property: When first time visitors
come to Kashmir, they expect to find bombed
out houses, craters on roads, and shops with
bare shelves. Why don't they find all this?
* * * * *
The reason why Kashmir is not full of
craters is because the government keeps
rebuilding much of what is destroyed.Between
1988 and 1997, the militants burned down
schools (758 of them), bridges (243) and
hospitals (nine). They also destroyed 1,264
other government-owned buildings, 9,309
private houses and 1,659 private shops.
Almost all of what they razed to the ground
had been built between 1947 and 1989.
Tourist bungalows constructed painstakingly
over the decades in the remotest of hills
were particularly favourite targets,
including a heritage, early 20th-century,
royal guest-house in Qazigund.
Between 1947 and 1991, the state had built
the 5th best infrastructure in all of India.
After a decade of militancy the state
dropped to number 10 in 2001. This was the
biggest drop in rank for any Indian state
during that period.
Developmental activities in the Valley
slowed down, especially in the first five or
six years of militancy.
The economy: When Amy Waldman of The
New York Times visited Kashmir in the summer
of 2002, she noticed that the road from the
airport into Srinagar was "lined with
mansions, many of them brand new, that would
not look out of place in Westchester
County." She later learnt that "There (were)
21,000 cars in Srinagar alone - a fivefold
increase from 1990. There were 560 private
schools in the valley seven years ago; there
are 1,360 now." Waldman then researched the
Jammu and Kashmir Bank and called it "the
most successful institution in the state and
the most vivid emblem of Kashmir's boom.
Since militancy began, its deposits have
grown from $458 million to $2.29 billion."
Her visits to the jewellery shops of
Srinagar revealed a similar spurt in
affluence.
Waldman's observations were extremely
perceptive. Despite thirteen years of
militancy, the State was the country's
eighth best consumer market even in 2001. Of
course, before militancy its rank had been
higher still: the state had ranked 5th in
1991. Had Waldman been able to compare
Kashmir's legendary wedding feasts before
and after militancy, she would have noticed
that the lavishness of the feasts had
increased further in the 1990s. Mineral
water bottles, soft drinks and bigger
portions of curd (yogurt) are only three of
the new items that were added during this
period.
So, has Kashmir been going through militancy
or an economic boom?
The answer is: both. The impact of militancy
on the economy has been mixed - and
seemingly contradictory. Only two sectors of
the economy actually hit the reverse gear:
tourism and industry. Till 1989, tourism was
not only the biggest sector after
agriculture-horticulture, but also the
biggest urban employer. Between 1990 and
1996, tourism in the Valley was close to
zero. However, it started reviving in 1997.
Early 1999 was a boom year, when there
weren't enough beds to cope with the rush of
tourists. After the Kargil war of 1999,
tourism slumped again.Day-to-day business in
Kashmir also suffered. Friday is the Islamic
Sabbath. However, secular Kashmir has chosen
to observe its weekly holiday on Sundays.
Between 1990 and 1996 (and, sometimes, after
1996 as well), militants would ensure that
shops were shut on Fridays (in addition to
Sundays). They would frequently ask
businessmen to pull down their shutters on
other days, too, to show the world that at
least the business community obeyed their
orders. According to one estimate, during
the twelve years between late 1989 and 2001,
the militants were able to shut businesses
down for the equivalent of three and a half
years. (The Aftab, May 30, 2002)
According to statistics available with the
government, the militants asked the private
sector (including hawkers and porters) to
stop work on 1,356 days between January 1990
and May 15, 2003.
Agriculture, which is the mainstay of the
economy, did not actually decline, but its
growth could not match that of the rest of
India. The state's agriculture ranked # 9 in
1991, but dropped to # 14 in 2001.
As soon as militancy started, industry
vanished. In 1991, J&K was India's second
most attractive state for investment. (This
factoid published in India Today,
came as a surprise even to me.) Thanks to
militancy, by 2001 its appeal to investors
had dropped to # 12. This was the biggest
decline for any state in India.
Then why does Kashmir's economy still look
quite good?
Generous government of India funding ensured
that militancy did not push Kashmir's
economy back. However, militancy did retard
Kashmir's economic growth. The 1990s were a
decade when India's economy grew at around
six per cent a year. Kashmir did not share
this post-1992 boom. For the first time
after its accession to India, Kashmir's
economy grew at a rate that, at 4.3 per cent
a year, was lower than that of India as a
whole.
Still, the point is that in the 1990s, far
from contracting, the economy of the state
actually grew. The state's per capita income
in 1996-97 was 13th among Indian states. It
had thus fallen from the # 9 position that
it had occupied in 1991, but was still
infinitely better than the
close-to-the-bottom position that it had in
1947. By 2001, it had bounced back a bit: to
the 11th rank.
The one thing that contracted in the '90s,
and dramatically so, was poverty. By the end
of the decade the state had the lowest
poverty ratio in all of India: 3.5 per cent.
By way of comparison, this ratio is 26.1 per
cent for India as a whole and 7.6 per cent
in neighbouring, high-performing Himachal
Pradesh. An ample infusion of funds from the
rest of India helped.
In 1991, the government of India decided
that 90 per cent of its aid to the state
would be a grant and only 10 per cent a
loan. This was a reversal of the position
that had obtained since 1969, when 70 per
cent was a loan and 30 per cent a grant. In
2001, Jammu & Kashmir received the fourth
highest per capita economic assistance from
the Government of India: Rs6,000 crore
($1.27 billion), or Rs6,000 for every man,
woman and child every year. (This much is
official. My own estimate is that in 1990
the state was # 8 in terms of per capita
"plan" assistance. It wasn't always so. In
1969, there were just three "special
category" states. J&K was one of the three.
However, by 1990, the list had swelled
enormously. Some of the other states were
given the 90:10 ratio. J&K was no longer in
the top three. The decision of 1991 took the
state back to the privileged position that
it had occupied in 1969.)
"So, where does all this Government of India
money go?" my socialite friends often ask.
Into the pockets of a few corrupt officials?
The answer is, "No," despite all the visible
indicators of corruption. The bulk of this
money goes into the salaries of 3.5 lakh
(0.35 million) government servants. Almost
every 22nd person in the Valley is a civil
servant or an employee of the public sector.
And then there is electricity. Between a
quarter and a fifth of what the centre gives
the State goes into "subsidizing" the power
consumed by the people.
* * * * *
In 2003, India and Pakistan made a fresh bid
for peace. Stratford suggested that
"although Pakistan's attempts to improve
relations with its neighbours (sic),
especially India, (are) motivated by
security concerns, economics is the primary
driver behind its actions." It added, "...
any progress in smoothing relations with
India would significantly improve Pakistan's
attractiveness to foreign investors and its
chances of growing its economy internally".
Whatever be the reason, let us hope that
this time around the attempts at
Indo-Pakistan reconciliation result in
lasting peace for the people of Kashmir and
South Asia.
Parvez Dewan
is an officer of the Indian Administrative
Service.
This is one volume of a three-set
encyclopaedia on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh,
which gives an account of the history,
tourist spots, culture, people, religion and
sports of Kashmir. |
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