The valley has suffered losses worth crores of rupees in the past month because of relentless curfews and shutdowns. ‘We lose around rupees 100 crore on every single shutdown. From February 9 to March 9, we have hardly had 7-8 working days. That means we have suffered a loss of 2200 crore since Afzal’s hanging’, Shakeel Qalandar, former president of Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry Kashmir, told a local news daily last week.
For nearly 15 days, the government imposed a curfew; shutdowns and protests consumed a week and the rest little was left for eight working days.
Naturally, for the most part, the state government and administration have to be blamed for causing the economic loss to the business community, traders, transporters, the tourist industry and scores of other sectors, both public and private. Add to it the number of times it has to postpone examinations and extend winter vacations. As curfew has become the first priority of the law-enforcement apparatus to lock people inside their homes, even government employees are unable to attend their duties.
With resort to declared and undeclared curfews and use of pepper gas and pellets guns (banned in Europe and not used in other states of India) to curb protests, the government is of its own signaling a bad image of the state and creating a fear-psychosis.
’50 to 60% of bookings have already been cancelled for the spring season’, Rouf Tramboo, President, Travel Agents Association, said while complaining of the adverse impact of the curfew and shutdowns on the tourism industry. Shakeel Qalandar holds the Government of India responsible for the new emerging scenario. “The government of India has ignored Kashmir. During the last two years, tourism gained in Kashmir, but politicians of India mistook the situation as a return of normalcy. Now the situation is such that it can boil over anytime.”
The problem with New Delhi is that it takes Kashmir as a law-and-order situation and once the ‘normalcy’ is restored, it forgets all its commitments and puts the issue on the back burner, unaddressed. It lives under the delusion that Kashmiris have caved in and resigned to fate. But political tremors that follow are enough to nail this lie.
When you have put the entire police force to use for conducting nocturnal raids, nabbing youth from their homes and inflicting PSAs on school-going kids and imprisoning separatist leadership and activists, you are triggering provocation yourself. Inadvertently, it is an invitation to violence.
For the past couple of years, the government has seen to it that there should be no outlet of expression left open. Simmering discontent accumulated and waited for a vent to burst. Post Afzal hanging opened this vent and set off a chain reaction.
We have to remember that the times we are living in do not allow us the liberty to ape the same modus operandi Congress used in its Quit India Movement in the 1940s. Today’s world is faster and has leapt far ahead of not only last century, but last decade too. The losses suffered in academics, economy, labour force, industry, etc a decade or two before due to strikes are too insignificant to the losses a day’s strike can inflict now. Time has already been an invaluable asset, but today its value is tagged with the nation’s redemption and disaster. Those who grab forelocks of the time are destined to succeed, and those who let it slip away are doomed.
It is the third time we are in non-violent agitational mode. Earlier in 2008 and 2010, Syed Ali Shah Geelani spearheaded the movement and, therefore, shared the good and bad attributes. In 2008, he was lambasted for ‘breaking the continuity’ of the movement as the fasting month of Ramzan dawned, and in 2010 he was criticised for ‘prolonging’ it and not giving a ‘breathing space’.
Today, we have an umbrella group of ‘off-stream’ political groups, MMM, which is running the ongoing movement now. Even though all its leadership and political workers are behind bars – and the hunt is on – it goes to its credit that people have followed its protest calendar. That in itself betrays the dominant political constituency the pro-resistance forces hold in Kashmir.
Whatever be the fate of the present movement under the banner of MMM, Geelani, at least, would not be a punching bag. He would not be mocked for ‘bailing out’ India. All slingshots would not be directed against him. It is now collective responsibility. The benefits and damages will be ‘collateral’.
MMM is pursuing the protest calendar much the same way we witnessed in 2008 and 2010. It doesn’t have any new mode of resistance, in sync with the demands of the time. Nonetheless, it has minimised strike days, releasing their adverse effect and the miseries they unfold. Squeezing people to the point of exhaustion, as 2010 did show, is counter-productive.
Tail Piece: When I concluded the piece, Geelani had called for a strike today, surpassing MMM. One wonders: when you have created a mutually deliberating council (MMM), what right do you have to bypass the MMM? This is divisive politics and must be condemned. The move aims at belittling MMM and exercising one’s monopoly. As if he too is there (pseudo-satisfaction), Mirwaiz chipped in and copied Geelani. Ridiculous.
About the Author: Hassan Zainagiri is a prominent Kashmiri columnist, writer, and socio-political commentator. He is best known for his critical essays and opinion columns frequently published in leading local newspapers of Jammu and Kashmir.
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