A State Subject’s Manifesto – Greater Kashmir

This election in J&K is not about governance; it is about the framework of governance which was changed in 2019

A State Subject’s Manifesto

Haseeb Drabu

1. Preamble:

• This manifesto, informed by a betrayed past, draws upon the distressing present to addresses an uncertain future. Kashmir is reeling, emotionally and psychologically, from an underlying sense of loss of identity, not just in political terms but also social and cultural terms. In this paroxysm of anxiety and alarm, there is need to talk to ourselves, to each other before we talk to others. This election is as good a forum as any to do so. Learnings from the failings of past, compulsions of the present and a sense of the opportunities in the future should be the basis of reaffirming identity and rebuilding the society as inclusive, tolerant and progressive.

1. Context:

• This election in J&K is not about governance; it is about the framework of governance which was changed in 2019. The constitutional, legislative, and administrative changes have made an overwhelming majority of Kashmiris feel wronged and vanquished. The need to assuage the collective conscience of Kashmiris, howsoever ephemerally, lies at the heart of this election.
• The foundational premise of the last elected legislative assembly of 2014 was autonomy which has since been dismantled with the abrogation of Article 370. A framework of a federally administered region is in place. The new assembly to be constituted in about a month from now will deliberate and debate the modalities of bringing it at par with other states.
• The election also comes after redrawing the electoral cartography through a standalone delimitation exercise which has not only shaken the inter-regional balance of representation but also stirred its intra-regional distribution.
• Purpose:
• These elections are not to be contested to accept the current position of a titular Chief Minister with the elected cabinet playing second fiddle to an unelected appointee. Instead, these elections, the first after a constitutional downgrade, legislative disempowerment and administrative supersession, are to be contested to restore or redefine the power of elected representatives. It is a first step in the journey for restoration of statehood, reaffirming the social identity and rebalancing the Centre-State relations within the federal framework. A tall order.
• During the last five years, the affective dynamics among citizens encompassed a widespread mix of emotions such as humiliation, anxiety, fear, and mistrust towards the government. As such, from the people’s perspective, this election will serve more than its representational purpose. It is going to be a cathartic exercise; the majority has had its way, it is now for the minority to have its say. The vote becomes an instrument of protest: vote is the new stone. It is a positive development that the ‘stone pelters’, often referred to as “agitational terrorists”, have come within the democratic fold.
• On the ground, an increasing number of Kashmiris, who though not supportive of the abrogation, are appreciative of the non-disruptive quotidian life. There is no stone pelting, hartals, bandhs, boycott or curfew. The marginalised can go about and do a day’s work and earn a living. The children can do their schooling without interruptions. The critically sick can get medical care without being stranded in the middle of the road. There are no collateral deaths or pellet injuries. This certainty in daily life is nothing short of transformational.

1. Approach:

• The vociferously vocalised political objective in Kashmir at the moment is restoration of status quo ante. That the future lies in going back to the past has always been the most enduring demand of the valley-centric political parties, the favourite hobby horse. Today, it is going back to 2019 position; till 2019 it was to go back to the pre-1953, which is a huge comedown, ab initio.
• The run up to the elections provides an opportunity for the political class to engage with the civil society to introspect if going back to the past, even, if possible, is desirable. Is it the best way of envisaging a future for the Kashmiri society? Or should the possibility of a new compact, terms of engagement be explored which are more meaningful and relevant to the needs and requirements of the Kashmiri society as it is today. A zeitgeist Not antediluvian.
• Today, India is battling for foundational aspects of the nation. Kashmir can become hugely consequential to the success of the counter narrative to majoritarianism. Just as it was in India’s post-colonial national building project. In this context, it is better to work upon a new roadmap for the future rather than renegotiate a past of compromise in the 1950s, co-option in the 1970s and confrontation in the 1990s. A new form of political accommodation irrespective of the power configuration at the centre that is in line with the popular perspectives at the social base.

1. Major issues:

The Kashmiri society will continue to be in liminality of a betrayed past and a threatened future unless some introspective conversations are had publicly on issues such as:

• Relationship with the larger civil society:
  • The most important takeaway from the events of August 2019 is not what the Union of India did or could do, but how the civil society all over the country (except Kashmir) and the Indian diaspora across the globe responded to it. They not only instinctively celebrated the abrogation but during the last five years have avowedly endorsed it through personal, professional and institutional networks of communication. It was virtually a digital referendum in favour of the Union government. It became evident that the special status of Kashmir was a political commitment made by fledgling post-colonial state which is not in line with the new majoritarian sensibilities of a mature powerful nation state.
  • The issue is no longer about governments alone, Union and State; it is about people now. So, the battle is not restricted to the executive or the Judiciary, but importantly extends to the civil society. All stakeholders have to engage with thought leaders, opinion makers, academicians, and policy makers. The politics of Kashmir has become insular; almost parochial. It ought to be regional and national.
  • There has to be a concerted well-planned effort to build a consensus among regional parties on pushing the pendulum back towards a more asymmetric federal structure. Support for this can be sought from regional parties like the TMC in West Bengal, the BJD in Orissa, DMK in Tamil Nadu, NCP in Maharashtra, and CPIM in Kerala. The INDIA alliance is evolving as a federal front which, though not a new idea, has more potential now than before.
  • A subset of this civil society, the Muslims across the country, have always had an uneasy and awkward relationship with the Kashmiri Muslims. Having been the ruling elite in India, other than faith, they share neither history nor language nor customs or practices with the erstwhile subaltern subjects of the Dogra Maharajas.
  • Given that majoritarianism is reconfiguring the relationship of Indian Muslims with the state as well as the society, do Kashmiris, who are in a majority, have to rethink of their relationship with the Muslims living in rest of the country as a minority? Will, for instance, the Owasi brand of assertive and tactical politics have relevance for Kashmir and vice versa? It is time to build consensus and tread with conviction and not a compromise under compulsion or a fait accompli.
• Repair and Restore inclusivity in the local civil society
  • The most important task is to repair and restore the social identity of Kashmir prior to seeking constitutional safeguards for it. Kashmir Pandits are an intrinsic and integral part of that identity. It is not only the responsibility of the government but of people at large. This has been by far the biggest failing of the Kashmiri society, which has been liberal, tolerant and inclusive.
  • The truth remains that there are no easy and quick solutions to the return of the Kashmiri pandits since it is against the moral and social fabric of the Kashmiri society. The biggest problem with the return of Kashmiri Pandits is that the symbolism has subsumed the substance of their return. Neither is their return a symbol of assertion of the Hindu right, nor is the inability to return a defeat of the liberals. Moving back is a family decision, not a political one.
• Reclaiming legitimacy and authority:
  • Discontinue direct elections to District Development Councils (DDC): The new and unique layer of DDC’s elected on adult suffrage will impair the sanctity and impede the efficacy of a legislative assembly, even after statehood. By electing fourteen members each to twenty DDCs in a cookie cutter model, the existing architecture of legislative democracy in J&K has been redesigned. The DDC are virtually “district assemblies” which are neither provided for in the Constitution of India nor is the direct mode of election stipulated. Now that a legislative assembly will be in place, the direct elections to the DDC undermine the primacy of legislators as the representatives of the people. Abolishing the directly elected DDC will be a step towards restoring the constitutional position, and legislative competence of the state.
  • Empower legislators within a disempowered legislative assembly: While the battle for empowering the legislative assembly is a long haul and will take time, the elected legislators need to be empowered. The lawmakers who have been at the margins of policymaking even prior to 2019 must be vested with quasi-executive authority with responsibility. Unlike all administrators, he is accountable every five years. There is need to separate the civil administration from the developmental administration and give a clearly defined role to the legislator in the latter. This framework for governance of development has to be legislator-oriented rather than being bureaucrat-centric. Even if the latter understand the realities of Kashmir, they rarely appreciate the sensibilities of Kashmiris.
  • Make Legislative Constituency the Administrative Units: To take the above thought further, the bureaucratic systems can be tweaked to create a role for the elected representatives by making the various administrative boundaries – from districts to patwar halqas – coterminous with the newly delimited assembly constituencies. At present, the jurisdiction of divisions and subdivisions of various developmental departments transcends the jurisdiction of the administrative units. At an operational level, it will mean that development planning will not be an administrative departmental planning exercise but a people-centric area planning effort.
  • Institutional Reform & Restructuring: An administrative restructuring can be dovetailed into this new governance structure to give it a developmental focus. Subsuming the administrative authority to the developmental functionality, the nearly two dozen ministries can be reengineered as:  Ministry for Economic Development, Ministry for Human Development, Ministry for Infrastructural Development, Ministry for Social Security, and Ministry for Administrative Affairs. This structure will allow synergies to be leveraged, and outcomes can be quantitative.
  • Affective style of Governance: The elected government’s approach has to be such that the citizen-state relations are not mere exercises of state authority but as guided by public concerns of loss of community control and personal hope. The first principle of governance will have to be the promotion of civic engagement and inclusivity. Unlike the President’s rule, elected governments have a social base and a representational legitimacy. As such, they can find different ways of political accommodation of the aspirations of Kashmiris.
  • Starting symbolically, for example, restore commemorating 13th July, which evokes the indigeneity of Kashmiri political history and historicizes the past of Kashmir, without in anyway negating or contradicting the current political reality. So too renaming places or an institution which had been named after Sheikh Abdullah as a tribute to the person who initiated the freedom struggle of Kashmir is unnecessary and provocative. History need not be distorted.

1. Improving Life, Lives, and livelihood:
   • Alternative Development Strategy: The Kashmir economy is an export-oriented import intensive artisanal and agrarian economy with adverse terms of trade resulting in outflow of capital. The net result is that expenditure in Kashmir is generating more income outside the state than within; a classic case of the “missing multiplier”.
   • Post 2007 global financial crisis, the world over, against the backdrop of deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy, small artisan businesses have been promoted as a liberatory alternative to large-scale enterprise and mass production. But not so for Kashmir.
   • The flawed strategy to bring in manufacturing capital into Kashmir, set up industrial estates, build physical assets is not in line neither with where the world is headed nor aligned with the structure of the local economy. The drivers of today’s economic growth and business prosperity are not physical assets but knowledge products. Value and wealth are being created on digital platforms, not on construction sites.
   • In a world where environment and sustainability rule the roost, where the carbon credit market is offering better returns than the stock markets, Kashmir should stay away from being a manufacturing or an industrial hub for corporate conglomerates. In the age of Fintechs and Regtechs, it makes no sense to put a premium on industrial units by offering fiscal and quantitative incentive.
   • ESG Capital of India: Given the composition of the state domestic product, predominantly sustainable enterprises such as the artisanal crafts sector, and horticultural J&K has the potential to be the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) capital of India. This can be done by incentivising farm’s carbon balance, biodiversity, water quality, productive and financial performance so that environmental gains are not only maximised but also monetised. Entrepreneurs in Kashmir should be helped to explore the carbon credit market. Providing access to all by being a government aggregator for carbon credits and share the revenues with the growers. Why should the state incentivise core sector and manufacturing enterprises, be these local or national. The artisanal economy is strong but needs to be made vibrant.
   • De-risking the economy: The biggest weakness of the Kashmir economy is its high-risk profile even though the risk-return is not adverse. Not only have the political risks been very high for the last thirty odd years, but the climate risks also as well business market risks have been a barrier to investments. To de-risk the economy, especially the commercial agricultural sector, introducing, institutionalising and integrating Futures and Options (F&O) trading into agricultural practices is crucial. With a 77 per cent market share in apples, 90 per cent in walnut and 100 per cent in saffron, these commodities are ideal for the F&O market. It can provide a robust mechanism for risk management and income stabilization making it attractive for investors.
   • Like many of the mineral resource rich states, Kashmir should essentially follow a restrictive policy of economic protection, and thereby imputing an economic element to the administrative and political boundaries of a state. The administrative border of a state is being slowly, but surely, converted into an economic boundary.
   • Employability not Employment: The issue is not employment generation if we follow policies aligned to and designed with respect for the structure of the economy which is fundamentally a knowledge based artisanal economy with little or no need of core sector corporates. The issue is of employability, rather than employment.
   • In a knowledge economy, where assets are not as important as skills, the focus has to be on employability and not employment. There is a major skill deficit in the Kashmir economy. Take the case of horticulture. Kashmir Valley is the sixth largest producers of apples in the World. It can power and propel India to be become the second largest apple growers in the world, next only to China.
   • To do so requires diverse professional skills in the operational business combining scientific knowledge, creativity and engagement with the environment. There is need for specific skill sets which range from sustainable agricultural practices to practical skills in planting, pruning, and maintaining plants. Besides these operational jobs, there will be need to get specialist in marketing perishable goods, supply chain professionals as well as logistics managers. Not to forget trained environmental sustainability people to ensure that the growers and the society benefit from the on-farm options for greater efficiency, profitability & sustainability. The entire eco-system will create more jobs than what the current level of unemployment is.
   • Private Capital: National vis-a-vis Local: Since independence, in various political situations and under different policy regimes, India Inc has never invested in Kashmir. There has been no greenfield investment. Nor for that matter have the Central Public Sector Undertakings invested in J&K.  All the states, without exception, have been developed by public investment, especially, investments made through CPSEs. Central PSEs which have invested more than Rs 25 lakh crores and employ more than 15 million people in the country of which J&K’s share is a pittance of Rs 165 crore, less than what many mid-sized local businesses have invested.
   • The government’s policy to incentivise corporate investments has historically ended up being a subsidy for private capital. The practice of incentives without infrastructure, especially logistics infrastructure in a land locked economy is a big barrier. There have been a few national corporates who came in but only to avail of the tax incentives. There should be an active and concerted effort to support local capital more than national capital. While outside investors and investments should be encouraged, preference should be given to financial capital rather than industrial capital. Also, the quality of investors and the sectors in which investment will be encouraged must be decided on the basis of the needs of the Kashmir economy and not the availability of capital.
   • Over the last 50 odd years, the amount that the state government would have forgone in terms of subsidies and fiscal concessions far outweighs the total investment that came in response to these. Is it time to accord full support and protection to the local entrepreneurs. Can there be having a local partner to be able to invest in the valley. Are there merits in following the finance capital route as against the industrial capital route? Get private equity players to invest in local enterprises as against corporate investment.
   • Rebuilding Trade and Business Networks: In the lockdown post August 5, 2019, the long-standing trade and commerce network with the rest of the country was severely disrupted. Besides the product and credit market linkages, this private business network had developed a deep social connect with the local businesses. The vehicles that ply the highway carry not just goods but also trust, bonds of livelihood and shared prosperity. These linkages between valley and the mainland had proved to be very strong are now getting disturbed, if not snapped just yet. With impersonal institutions like NAFED replacing them, the social linkages have considerably weakened. The restoration of the private socio-commercial networks – commission agents, distributors and wholesalers of commodities — will go a long way in bridging the trust deficit and current chasm in the relationship.

• Bifurcation: De facto to de jure
  • A separate statehood for Jammu has been a demand oft raised in Jammu after abrogation. Post 2019, for all practical purposes, Jammu has been virtually bifurcated from Kashmir, both administratively as well as politically. A series of initiatives have already split the functional administration; the developmental administration was already divided. Almost every administrative department has been divided on divisional geography. This has only added to the distancing between Jammu and Kashmir, which at the best of times have been adversarial, if not antagonistic to each other. The two now share little else than a troubled past, having nothing in common; geographically, linguistically, culturally, ethnically and economically or in terms of religion.
  • Indeed, trifurcation would have been a much cleaner option when the state was bifurcated in 2019. However, the last delimitation exercise opened the door for bifurcation when it combined South Kashmir with Pir Panchal – Anantnag, Poonch and Rajouri – into one parliamentary constituency. What is sauce for goose is sauce for the gander. The only contentious area will then be the Chenab Valley which includes, Doda, Kishtwar and Bhaderwah. The resistance to make the de facto bifurcation de jure, will not be to the principle but the design.
  • The idea of dividing J&K into three parts has a long and chequered history. Originally proposed by Owen Dixon in 1950, it found favour with B.R. Ambedkar. Later, in 1966, Karan Singh, the erstwhile Maharaja also saw merit in separating Jammu from Kashmir. As defence minister, R. Venkataraman and Indrajit Gupta as Home Minister, also favoured it. The RSS, which has forever advocated trifurcation, renewed its efforts after the State Autonomy Report was tabled in the legislative assembly of J&K in the spring of 1999.
  • Rather than resort to gerrymandering through delimitation, demographic change through domicile relaxation, and social engineering, to convert a demographic majority into a political minority, it will be cleaner and less contentious to separate the two. Both will prosper.
• Heritage as Identity:
  1. Beyond politics, a substantive way of dealing with alienation and reaffirming identity has to be in the cultural space. In a collective voyage of self-discovery, preserving, promoting and propagating heritage has to be an integral part of weaving a diverse yet composite narrative to reorient our present and redefine our future.
  2. It is the discursive and material practices and processes that contribute to making Kashmir not only a region within a geography but a region with a unique composite identity. These aspects and elements draw from the existing identity and contribute to furthering the uniqueness of the identity of Kashmir and Kashmiris. And, of course, it is this which has been getting manifested in multiple ways, not the least in politics.