Arun Joshi
\nMr Home Minister, it is time to take a long jump to reach out to the perceived stakeholders in Kashmir. There is no harm in knocking their doors again even if the first attempt remained unanswered last year, when the passions were running high and separatists were caught in their own cobwebs.<\/p>\n
The situation has changed \u2014 at present there is an apparent ease in atmosphere and on surface as against the deeper sense of doubt and anger when Rajnath Singh made three visits to Kashmir last year. Today, things stand differently than last year when there were prejudices against the state of India. Those were the times when so many vested interests were at work to fuel the street protests. It appeared as if the \u201cnow or never\u201d sentiment laced with anger and manifested by the high-energy stone-throwing was there to stay forever.<\/p>\n
In September 2017, the nation\u2019s stakes have become quite high. Any rigidity at this stage would be unhelpful in achieving the objectives of peace and progress in this economically and mentally distressed place. Hopes fail to realise while the worst fears threaten to become true.<\/p>\n
The physical and psychological gaps have been filled by radicalisation. Militants display their atrocious power two ways \u2014 \u201ckilling the adversary\u201d and \u201cmartyrdom\u201d. The audacious attacks on security forces display their raw power to kill and that inspires the would-be radicalised militants. They achieve the same objective when they fall to bullets of the security forces. Their \u201cmartyrdom\u201d becomes a mental history for the youngsters. The vicious circle is going on.<\/p>\n
The credibility of Delhi is at stake. There is no doubt that Pakistan and some vested interests have their immitigable role in ruining Kashmir, and the undeniable fact is that the Indian nation has not been able to reverse the trend. Bullet for bullet, unilateral ceasefires, unconditional talks have not worked out. Opportunities were squandered away or sabotaged. The Indian nation was the bigger loser in the whole game.<\/p>\n
On the surface, things are calmer as compared to the devastating street storm of 2016. But have the forces of violence and disruption been taken care of in 2017? No.<\/p>\n
Schools are closed. The grass-roots democratic institutions \u2014 panchayats and urban civic bodies \u2014 are awaiting their elections for years now. Severe distress has paralysed the economy. Tourist arrivals have fallen and 26 lakh people associated with the tourism industry are facing sleeplessness.<\/p>\n
Earlier, foreign countries used to issue travel advisories; now the Indian TV channels have started issuing shrill advisories to tourists against visiting the Valley. Their Kashmir coverage is laced with unlimited stock of harsh words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arun Joshi Mr Home Minister, it is time to take a long jump to reach out to the perceived stakeholders in Kashmir. There is no harm in knocking their doors again even if the first attempt remained unanswered last year, when the passions were running high and separatists were caught in their own cobwebs. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4434,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions\/4434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}