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| Coming down to roads from roadmaps, how powerful are the forces of change | | | Bashir Assad
Srinagar, Mar 11: On February 16, 2012, this newspaper published a news story titling "In politics rats marry snakes, Bulls chase lizards" suggesting that the Kashmiri separatists have of late, started realizing importance of development in shaping the political discourse in the state. the political commentary was actually based on the news item that Mirwaiz Umer Farooq had on that day inaugurated a shopping complex in old city built by M/S Teerath Ram & Company. The commentary has substantiated the view point by a series of Friday sermons by Mirwaiz on Friday congregations during the year 2011. The sermons were witnessed to the fact that Mirwaiz, very unlike of separatist politics, has shown keen interest in highlighting the day-to-day problems and the developmental issues through out the year that passed which was an indicator that the separatist politics is being revisited to match the genuine concerns of the common people without disturbing their locus- stand viz-a-viz the political issue.
Only Sunday, hard-line separatist leader Sayed Ali Geelani issued an extraordinary statement to the press criticizing the budget 2012-13, though in a different context, which cannot be overlooked because in changing socio-political and economic scenario the state deserves much more attention.
While criticizing the government Geelani in his statement said, "Major chunk of the state budget goes waste on the overdue expenses of ministers and legislative members and less amount of the budget is being allotted for development". Though Geelani was apparently anguished over the Anantnag incident in which a youth was crushed by a fast running army vehicle, however, he could not remain without criticizing the government for its neglect in upgrading the road connectivity in the state which was the major cause of frequent tragic accidents. While regretting over the increase of traffic accident, Geelani said that Srinagar-Jammu and Jammu-Kashtawar roads were proving lethal.
"The condition of the roads is the same as it was in 1947. There has been a cent percent increase in the transport but no attention is being paid on widening of the roads," he added Geelani also referred to the rampant corruption in a single but significant sentence."The amount spent for the widening and up gradation of roads goes into the pockets of corrupt officers," Geelani alleged in his statement.
In yet another important observation Geelani castigated army for not adhering to the traffic rules and said that the graph of road accidents involving army was rising. He said that the public anger over the killing of a youth Yasir Ayob Wani was understandable, adding that he himself wanted to go to Anantnag for condolences "but the government barred me from doing so."
This compact and characteristic commandment statement of Geelani is worth research for political commentators. Geelani conveys his message in a way that it can be characterized both as a statesman statement which could determines the future discourse and realignment of political forces in the state and at the same time it could be seen described as the statement of Britain form of ambiguity wherein Geelani conveys everything yet he says nothing.
While there is a scope for political commentators to go for in-depth analysis, however, one can understand, how powerful are the forces of change. While analysing the statements ( both in terms of ambiguity and ambitions) of the leaders of separatist groups Geelani and Mirwaiz, one hardly resists that the change today tames and occasionally swallows yesterdays heroes deep into the political incompetence. Yesterday they would not recognize the change and today they have come down to roads from roadmaps, from political concepts to traffic rules and perhaps from self determination to waging war against corruption.
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