Unrest taking a heavy toll on fair administration!
Explanation and accountability are the worst victims of unrest culminating into exploitation, corruption and vested interest of favouritism.
It is almost seven decades now that Kashmir has not been politically as calm as most other parts of the subcontinent are. With earlier occasional voices of dissent, Kashmir conflict has changed to its worst form since 1988. The unrest in Kashmir has now passed on to the fourth generation with totally different shape and dimensions. The present unrest has started revealing its far-reaching ramifications both at local and international levels. Kashmir and Kashmir conflict is not an ordinary issue that can be brushed under the carpet to be deliberated upon at some other occasion at one’s own convenience. The impact of unrest has touched almost every facet of Kashmiri life. Our indigenous politics has become so murky that Plato’s saying ‘One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors ‘holds very true in Kashmir. Economy, education, culture, and bio-network too have got badly harmed. But the worst hit is the administration and the objective system of governance.
In a confused system where strife plagues almost all fields of life, half-hearted governance becomes a norm. Unrest creates a situation of fear-psychosis leading to an atmosphere of manipulations. Explanation and accountability are the worst victims of unrest culminating into exploitation, corruption and vested interest of favouritism. Interestingly, even while struggling with unrest and its huge costs we claim to be in a democracy and expect justice at all levels particularly on administrative front. However, in a situation of uncertainty with very little or at occasions no accountability the vested political interests and some dark moles in administration do not allow justice to prevail and if the democratic mechanism pushes for some answerability, it confines merely to a trickle down. For the last two decades of an intense turbulent period where we had several elected governments of different political making and few patches of other than elected administrations, the governance could never keep pace with extreme ends of fairness and impartiality as envisaged in the bible of democracy. The reason being that most of the administrations and political dispensations exhausted much of their ability and resources to mold the political discourse and mood of people to the liking of a particular thought process and ideology. And when people’s ideologies are made to move against the tide the task becomes not only tough but at times impossible. That is where the local governance, for which most of the governments were empowered and mandated only, got badly distracted to the prejudice and subsequent mismanagement.
With due regards to the entire institutions and respect to lawmakers, in particular, the whole system of governance at present has drifted into the liking of sycophants and make-believe exploiters who have become eyes and ear of the political and administrative mechanism. In a strife torn state where state and the people lose their channels of communication and become compulsively antagonistic to each other the exploiters and the turncoats enjoy the absolute power and flourish to the extent of extreme power brokers. A chain of exploitation, corruption, and favouritism gets in motion against the wishes of both the state and its people but to the best liking of these exploiters. At present state of Jammu and Kashmir and Kashmir valley, in particular, is in the strong grip of political, economic, and administrative exploiters who make our political and administrative establishment to believe that every aspect of governance is hunky-dory. Frankly speaking, in most of the cases the top brass is never in the know of the facts on the ground and they make mistakes unknowingly without any intention to harm anyone’s interests. While the state and its political masters lose their standing with every incident of injustice and seemingly ‘unintentional maladministration’ the worst sufferers are the people at large.
The old saying, ‘it’s the régime of the time that holds true power after the celestial authority’ seems to have lost its relevance in Kashmir and the reason being existing political fluidity and the exploitation. The government of the time should understand the extent and limitations of their mandate for better governance than promoting a political thesis and resolve the administrative issues of its people in a justified manner. It should isolate itself from the band of exploiters and distance from political brokers who have no identity of their own but as parasites are exploiting and exercising authority and destroying the politico-administrative edifice of the state beyond repairs.