Seven years after August 5: Delaying JK statehood undermines gains

For years now Jammu and Kashmir has reported one of the highest youth unemployment rates in India, much higher than the national average. (File Photo)

Anniversaries can often become rituals. Worse, they can become alibis. Seven years ago, Article 370 was abrogated, and the state of Jammu and Kashmir was reduced to two Union Territories. The constitutional argument around it is over. The law that Parliament passed received the imprimatur of the Supreme Court and has attained a measure of political finality. The bigger question is: Did the 2019 intervention achieve what was promised? Three principal rationales were given in 2019 for the abrogation and downgrading of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. First, that Article 370 had taken on a psychological resonance well beyond its legal purport. It fed the idea of conditional integration and in doing so nurtured separatism. On this score, the record is significant. The separatist lexicon has clearly lost much of its sheen. The Hurriyat exists only on paper. Apart from the occasional sermon delivered by the Mirwaiz from the pulpit at Jama Masjid, little of the once all-pervasive separatist combine survives. Political parties that forecast a constitutional apocalypse have resumed electoral politics and elections are increasingly inclusive. Cycles of mass agitation once commonplace, the ecosystem of hartals, shutdowns and street violence that routinely brought life in the Valley to a halt have significantly abated, if not ended.The absence of an uprising, however, is not the presence of belonging. Integration cannot be judged merely by quiet streets, tourist arrivals, cultural festivals, or the National Song and National Anthem being sung with ritualistic precision. Does the citizen fully feel that this is his or her republic, too: Equal, responsive, and unafraid to question? Second, the arrangement held the promise of strengthening nationalist political forces while allowing the state to deal more aggressively with cross-border terrorism and home-grown militancy. There is no denying the substantial security gains. Terrorist networks have been disrupted; the organisational sinews of violence, much of it fuelled from across the border, have been – rightly — dealt with ruthlessness. Targeted killings continue, however, to be a reminder that operational stability is not yet political certainty. The Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack on Baisaran in Pahalgam last year was just one reminder of that. No less significant, the Assembly election in 2024, the first in 10 years, returned the National Conference to power. August 2019, and the delimitation that followed, did not yield the political realignment that was either expected or would have served the Centre’s purposes best. That the Union government gracefully accepted the verdict of polls it did not win tells you something that no amendment to the Constitution can – Indian electoral democracy functions in Jammu and Kashmir, and its sovereignty there is not contingent on winning elections. Contrast that with the manipulated governance structures in POJK, and the mass uprising and repression being unleashed across the LOC. Third, direct central rule was also meant to cleanse the state of long-entrenched networks of patronage and corruption, improve governance, and deliver development on the ground directly from New Delhi without local interference. It is here that the promise of 2019 remains most unfulfilled. Direct rule may have temporarily increased accountability, but the emergency dispensation has been allowed to settle into permanence. There is now an elected Chief Minister and cabinet in Jammu and Kashmir. But powers are scattered between them, the Lieutenant Governor and New Delhi. The Lieutenant Governor cannot be held accountable at the polls; the chief minister can but does not have the authority of a full state government. Both positions are diminished by this arrangement. I spent much of my summe