Early next year, notwithstanding the anti-election campaign that has now been unleashed by secessionists, an elected government will again hold power in the State. Influential figures in New Delhi’s policy establishment have been suggesting that once the rituals of democracy are done with, New Delhi, along with Islamabad, must get down to the real business of hammering out a peace deal with the very politicians who are seeking to obstruct the elections. While the new government goes about fixing roads and sewers, this line of thinking has it, the big boys will fix Jammu and Kashmir’s future.
If New Delhi is in fact serious about peace-building in Jammu and Kashmir, it must break with this script — a script which over the last six decades has led to a breakdown of democratic institutions in the State and engendered a near-clinical dysfunction in its political life. Instead, the politicians who are elected this winter must be pushed to come up with a workable vision of the State’s future — and encouraged to negotiate its contours and content with their counterparts in Parliament.
Ever since Independence, New Delhi had sought to secure Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India through a series of backroom deals. Politicians were cajoled — and sometimes coerced — to sign agreements in 1952, 1966, 1971 and 1975. Not one was debated and ratified by an elected body.
http://newageislam.com/democracy-and-the-peace-process-in-jammu-and-kashmir-/current-affairs/d/925
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1:27 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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