The final test

The eight-point package for Kashmir initiates a larger process of introspection,but one of its most visible planks is the immediate resumption of schooling,which had been suspended for around three months,so 13.73 lakh students had lost a full term of the academic year. Government and private schools had been shut,except for the occasional snatched day of lull,with those in and around Srinagar worst affected. Now,they will be scrambling to make up for time lost.

Children measure their days in the familiar arc between home and school,but that rhythm was broken in these last few months of curfew and protest. Of course,as always,those who could afford it would send their children out of the Valley,and the more affluent schools would upload course material and tests. Others tried out community-driven group-schooling arrangements,and a rash of these improvised learning spaces sprung up in homes,mosques and courtyards. Nothing spoke of the state of emergency as painfully as the deserted,silent schoolyards and classrooms. Making sure that childrens education is not compromised indicates the stake you have in normalcy. Many of those who volunteered to teach were driven by their own memories of the last two decades,when hundreds of school buildings were destroyed in militant violence or turned into makeshift security camps. This generation of Kashmiris does not need to be told the importance of schooling,as their own education was abruptly interrupted,and they know what a dramatic difference it makes to ones prospects.

The question of keeping schools running acquired a sharper,more poignant edge in the past few months because the protests were so overwhelmingly full of young people,children and teenagers who should have been in school. Even 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo was returning home from his tuition class when he was killed,which set off these terrible waves of protest and clampdown. These young people,and their parents should have enormous stakes in a stable Kashmir. Their futures hinge on education. This self-perpetuating cycle of violence and further crisis will,hopefully,stop once classes resume seriously.