Wow. Matters always get heated up when J&K comes up. Folks, chill out. This is HN, not one of the toxic comment cesspools around the internet.
IMO, the removal of article 370 was a good move because:
- Article 370 was originally meant to be temporary. Central governments before the current one did not have the will, numbers and political spine to get it done.
- Kashmir, as it was, would have been fine if it was a progressive and developing state. Yes, it has developed compared what the situation was before, but give the amount of money that is poured in there per capita, compared to the rest of the country, is a lot! And it does not reach the people.
- The traditional Federal and State government model works decently well but it does not work with Kashmir and the local government could pick and choose only the new rules and amendments they liked. Anecdote: Kashmir government has a tenure of 6 years, the rest of India: 5 years. India had made that provision for a short time and was rolled back. Since it was more convenient for Kashmiri politicians, it was adopted and kept.
- Indian Supreme Court rulings did not always apply to Kashmir.
- The new Union Territory of Ladakh wanted to be so for a long time.
- Local politicians loved article 370. It gave them the autonomy to get more money and leverage to keep themselves in power. They often walked a diplomatic line so as to keep the money lines open from India and keep Pakistan engaged and enticed.
- Regional and religious Separatists thrives in J&K, often getting financed by Pakistan and inciting the people and youth in J&K. These money sources are being cut off since months now, slowing reducing the illicit finances to these activities.
- From what I have seen from interviews of locals, people are happy to angry about the change, while some are just unhappy with the ‘change’ as they had adapted to the conditions.
Now, about the way it was done:
- the central government did the necessary groundwork to identify threats and risks.
- recalled all tourists, pilgrims and out of state students from the area.
- Sent in army platoons to maintain law and order situation.
- clamped down on local leadership
- took down the internet services
- increases alertness along the Pakistan border.
Though I would personally hate to be in this situation, I think I understand and appreciate why it was done.
Absence of even some of the above measures would have resulted in the spread of massive misinformation or even propaganda and resulted in violent incidents on scale. Local politicians and separatists would be the ones to provoke this as removal of article 370 had a direct impact on their power and influence. The situation could have been dire and the same opposition parties would have been singing a different tune as to ‘why were adequate measures not taken’?
The restrictions are already being phased out and I hope the life for general population normalizes soon.
All this is done, but what next?
The removal of article 370 has had multiple challenges in the Supreme Court, so it has yet to be seen how it plays out. Also, there is a lot of work that needs to be done there in the coming years to win over the trust of the local populace. Security threats may increase - as it can be easily seen how unhappy Pakistan is with the removal of article 370. Those have to be tackled.
How this move actually works out depends on how the government tackles the upcoming hurdles, and J&K being a UT would certainly help them.
This is my opinion about the situation and the way it was tacked. Hope I am not downvoted into oblivion for this. Oh, well. :shrug: