Power woes
As the autumn sets in here in the Valley, people are made to believe that the administration and its machinery are geared up to face the coming winter. But once the actual winter sets in, everything goes haywire. This is what has been happening in the past and this season too things seem no different. […]
Beyond votes
By showing repeated lack of will to deal with Kashmir, both in its domestic as well as international contexts, the BJP-led Central government in New Delhi has done no good – neither to Kashmir nor to itself. And together with its over-reliance on containing the public dissent and resentment here through military means, BJP has […]
‘Split personality syndrome’
When East India Company started consolidating British imperial control over India by the mid-eighteenth century, it was directly pitted against the Muslims who had been ruling India since the eleventh century. Understandably then, for Muslims the loss of power and position of privilege was much more profound than what was felt by any other religious […]
Weigh their rhetoric
People in Kashmir have all remained at the receiving end of the bombardment of huge financial figures. No wonder then quite a few clichés have made it to the official assertions here — both of the political and bureaucratic bosses. Terms like ‘peace’ and ‘development’ and ‘historic initiatives’ and ‘landmark decisions’ are certainly the most […]
Saying is not doing!
Politicians have a knack for saying one thing and doing another altogether. They master the skills of claiming one position while actually occupying another. And this trait is easily discernible when they are in power, and without it. Concerning a same issue, in power, their stance is entirely different and sometimes divergently opposite to the […]
New Year resolution
Towards the end of each calendar year it’s customary to review the year going by and make fresh resolutions for the new beginning. So the exercise itself is a good mix of pessimism and hope. Looking at the failures and follies of past is the cause and source of regret and hopelessness while the resolve […]
Politics of self-interest
The kind of political brickbats that are at display these days are like the fireworks one gets to see during festivities. And what is interesting is that every single party and individual active in politics of all hues are involved and engaged in public ridicule of their respective adversaries. While National Conference and Peoples Democratic […]
Non-negotiable needs
Kashmir’s jobless youth certainly have something to cheer about, at least for the time-being, as they are once again being promised a lot of things, courtesy forthcoming elections. Even though, unlike in the past, as of now various mainstream political parties have not promised jobs to the youth – which they will certainly do when […]
No more ‘either-or’ politics
The fundamental importance of human freedom, in general, is strongly supplemented by the “instrumental effectiveness of freedoms of particular kinds to promote freedoms of other kinds”. It is because the linkages between different types of freedoms are empirical and causal, rather than constitutive and compositional. This is explained with the strong evidence that various freedoms, […]
It’s unfortunate!
In the developed West, if you are driving a car and you hear a siren of an ambulance or a police car, you simply pull up to the side to make way for it. The rule-book says you can’t just slow down but you have to stop; and people obey this rule so religiously that […]
