| Rs 91,300 per person central grant in Kashmir, Rs 4,300 in UP | | Why this alienation? | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Feb 20: Almost all Kashmiri leaders say that people of the Valley are alienated from the national mainstream. Why do they feel alienated? It is Kashmir which has been at the helm of affairs in the state since 1947; it is Kashmir which holds all the portfolios with political weight, patronage and funds, including Home, finance, Revenue and Education. It is Kashmir which controls recruitment agencies and technical and professional institutions. Gain, it is Kashmir where the rate of unemployment is less than 30 per cent, as compared to over 69 per cent in Jammu. The fact is Kashmir is politically very powerful region in the country.
Kashmir is also the most privileged part of the country in the sense that it got 10 per cent of all the central grants given to the states over the period between 2000 and 2016. And, this, notwithstanding the fact that State of J&K houses just one per cent of the country's population.
Contrast J&K with Uttar Pradesh and one will find the difference. UP houses nearly 13 per cent of the country's population but it got only "8.2 per cent of central grants" during the period 2000-16. In other words, J&K, which houses roughly 12.55 million people, got Rs.91,300 per person during the period 2000-2016. As for UP, it got a paltry Rs.4,300 per person during the same period.
Not just this, even among the special category states, including Nagaland, J&K got a "disproportionate amount of Central Assistance".
J&K got "Rs.1.14 lakh crore in grants between 2000 and 2016". It was more than a quarter of the Central funds disbursed to the 11 special category states in that period".
This alienation formulation is flawed. It should be the people of Jammu and Ladakh who should feel alienated as they have been at the receiving end ever since the state's accession to India. The causes of alienation are deeper and these are neither political nor economic. |
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