The democracy dividend

Panchayati raj heralds a new opportunity. The amendments canvassed could truly make it the promised “instrument of vigorous local self-government”. The structural change and grassroots empowerment it entails will establish building blocks for autonomy bottom-up.

The present Act proposes elected halqa panchayats for clusters of villages (3,000 to 4,500 population); nominations to bring women’s representation up to 33 per cent; indirectly elected block development councils and districtplanning and development boards; and a panchayat adalat for every halqa panchayat. The seminar favoured a directly elected district board; mandatory 33 per cent elective reservations for women; and access to information to ensure transparency and accountability.

Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah held out the prospect of adopting some of these amendments in the Assembly’s July session. He hoped to enact regional autonomy legislation by year-end, a process that may be greatly eased as directly elected zila parishads could smoothen the way for accommodating demands for sub-regional autonomy in Jammu and Ladakh.

Panchayat polls this autumn, preferably on the basis of an amended Act, will mean electing over 27,000 grassroots functionaries in about 2,700 halqa panchayats and the districts. Parties are permitted to contest but many Independents, community leaders and local notables will be in the fray. Security for some 80,000-100,000 candidates will be assisted by the village protection forcethat should be in place by then.

The militants and their mentors in Pakistan may do all they can to disrupt the poll. They fear democracy, normalcy and development, and will seek to link Kashmir with nuclear nightmares of their creation. This gambit must be foiled and the exercise in self-determination that these elections represent enabled to move forward. The panchayat polls will entrench the political process, create new foci of social and development action and establish a grievance machinery and a system of accountability. As elsewhere, there will be political, bureaucratic and other opposition to be overcome.

The Hurriyat is now more deeply divided but should be encouraged to enter the fray. It actively campaigned against the last two elections — and lost. Shabir Shah has now launched his Democratic Freedom Party and opted for dialogue. He should drop conditions and participate in these polls. Maulvi Omar Farooq has revived his Awami Action Committee and should do likewise.

Militancy has failed.The Jamaat-i-Islami still provides cadres for the Hizbul Mujahadeen; but the hard core of residual militancy is now formed of the Harkatul Ansar and the Lashkar-e Toiba, fundamentalist ISI-sponsored groups manned by Pakistani, Afghan and other foreign mercenaries.

Infiltration has shifted to Poonch, Rajouri and Udhampur. Isolated Hindu families offer soft targets. Efforts hereby to communalise the situation and start a movement of ethnic cleansing have thus far been foiled.

The Centre-State and Regional Autonomy Committees set up by the J&K Government are soon to report. It is important to get a broad cross-party/region consensus. With panchayati raj in force and credible movement towards multi-tiered autonomy and self-determination, the last remnants of insurgency will begin to unravel.

More important will be the backlash across the LOC. “Azad” Kashmir has everything other than azadi. The Northern Areas too is beginning to seethe as it lacks even the meanest democratic sights and has beenrobbed of its distinctive identity. The contrast between trends on the two sides of the LOC will confront Islamabad with a Kashmir “bomb” it can only handle by coming to terms with the ground realities it has long evaded and denied.

The recent nuclear explosions change nothing. Known covert capability has been unveiled, with matching delivery systems. Saner sections in Pakistan had even earlier realised that war was ruled out and that the proxy war in Kashmir was petering out.

The sadly de-contextualised human rights gambit in Kashmir peaked and died as the Kashmir question was never a human rights issue. Human rights violations were, if at all, a consequence of insurgency and cross-border intervention. The current effort to link Kashmir with imminent nuclear war will also fail. There is going to be no nuclear or other war in or over Kashmir. And the Indian and Pakistani leadership is not likely to be any less responsible than that of the other nuclear powers.

It may take some weeks for euphoria,jingoistic rhetoric and hopes of international intervention to subside. Thereafter, cold logic on both sides will probably lead to a resumption of the Foreign Secretaries’ dialogue.

Once the dialogue commences, it may take many rounds to exhaust the recitation of the very divergent facts and sequence of events that both sides may rehearse. It is only after such mandatory orations for the record that the talks will move to the ground realities on both sides of the LOC.

Third-party mediation will not help. Ham-handed and biased Western intervention has in past decades been part of the problem. Hopefully, howsoever tortuous the route, the Chagai explosions have given Pakistan self-assurance and a sense of identity previously lacking. Being anti-Indian or seeking to equate itself with India, the other “nation” betrays negativism. It should now see itself as a large, proud nation with a history and civilisation it shares with India and does not need to disown.

Following this, and with India too sheddinginhibitions about talking comprehensively with Pakistan, the two countries may soon find they are essentially on the same side. Certainly on the NPT, CTBT, et al they have a common interest in refashioning an iniquitous world order.

Likewise on development and trade issues, and SAARC. If the “bombs” nudge them in this direction, the world may rub its eyes in disbelief a year on as India and Pakistan begin to rediscover one another and South Asian comes into its own.