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| Governance, not money, the solution to Kashmir: Shourie | | Polarisation between Jammu and Kashmir complete | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, July 4: Former Union minister and great opinion leader Arun Shourie has spoken on Jammu and Kashmir after quite some time. He has said Kashmir is not a special region or that it has a separate history. He made this statement in response to a question during an interview to a leading national daily. The question was: "If it is not the fact that Kashmir has a separate culture, if it is not the fact that it has a separate history?'
His answer was very candid. He, inter-alia, said: "There are, of course, many roots. But I think there is basic cause - and you see this not just in Kashmir, you see it in every state of the Northeast also, other than Sikkim".
Shourie held New Delhi and local leadership in Kashmir and Northeast responsible for the troubles the nation has been facing there. He said New Delhi has mishandled these states/regions and that its whole approach that it could take care of the restive regions through money is highly flawed..
"And that is the way that we have chosen to administer these areas. You see, in effect, Delhi has sub-contracted governance of the state to someone or the other; and has told him, 'We will keep sending you the money, and you keep the semblance of a government going. For the rest, you do what you like. The result has been that the people have not got the services which are their right. And as a consequence of that, not only have the people continued to suffer, the sub-contractor has lost legitimacy and then not been able to keep even that semblance of a government going. We have then switched to another sub-contractor - only to repeat the whole cycle. It is this sub-contracting model of dealing with these states that has run its course".
What Shourie said was absolutely correct. Indeed, New Delhi bungled in Jammu & Kashmir by sub-contracting governance of the state and putting all eggs in the court of either Sheikh Abdullah or Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad or GM Sadid or Mir Qasim, or Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah, Mufti Sayeed and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti or Ghulam Nabi Azad. All of them failed to provide services to the people and all have lost legitimacy. They are mortally afraid of facing people and that's the reason they live under very tight security. They only minted money and promoted their own selfish interests.
Not just this they adopted policies that pitted Kashmir against Jammu and Kashmir against Ladakh; community against community and social groups against social groups. It was their communal approach and Kashmir-centric approach - apart from their insistence on divisive demands such as autonomy, self-rule, azadi and Pakistan that polarized the regions. Today, the position is that the polarization between Jammu and Kashmir and between Kashmir and Ladakh is almost complete with the people professing different faiths pulling in different directions.
It's only natural that there are loud clamours in Jammu and Ladakh for separation from Kashmir. It is those whom New Delhi sub-contracted governance of the state from time to time during the past 70 years who are squarely responsible for all these slogans. There are potent reasons to believe that the state would disintegrate sooner than later as the political aspirations of Kashmiri leaders and people of Jammu and Ladakh are contradictory and mutually exclusive. |
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