Jammu Kashmir Panchayat Polls: Grassroots democracy is flowering in the Valley
When the government of India made an announcement about conducting the Urban Local Body (ULB) and the Panchayat Polls in Jammu and Kashmir sometime ago, a strange and unexplained feeling of uneasiness gripped me from inside; owing, perhaps, to the fear of gun violence and the rampant nuisance of craftily and strategically-penetrated terror-mills prevalent across the Kashmir Valley.
The scepticism was amplified by the ongoing legal proceedings underway in the Supreme Court over Article 35A, which has been able to generate a lot of political heat across the country and the state of Jammu and Kashmir in particular. This ultimately led to the boycott of said polls by the two mainstream political amalgams of the state — The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (NC).
The boycott, frankly, left me in a deep state of thought.
I was perplexed about the fate and the future of democracy and democratic institutions in the Kashmir Valley with two conventional front-runners of mainstream politics here having resorted to political arm-twisting of sorts, lending vindication to the canons of the secessionists (inadvertently, I would like to believe).
As the day of polling neared, this thought about the fate of a grassroots democratic event or festival, if I may, just kept on bothering and nagging me.
Frankly speaking, I had my own reservations, based on my overall calculations and assessments of the security scenario about the percentage of voting, the fervour and zeal with which the grassroots democratic festival would be celebrated, or whether people would even venture out of their homes at all on the given day of polling.
I have always been someone who has vouched for the strong inclination of Kashmiris towards democracy and democratic processes over mindless terror or status quo-ist ideas of secessionism in my discussions with peers and contemporaries from different hues of ideologies.
Without unfurling too many pages of the annals of history, Kashmiris have demonstrated this with amazing indices of participation — most recently in 2002, 2008 and 2014. I always have been of the firm belief that during the Partition, from the available options of religious affiliation and secular and pluralistic democracy, Kashmiris have mindfully chosen the latter with the highest degree of conviction and belief, the belief with which Kashmiris have been effectively swimming against the tide through more than half a century now.
Day one of the polling schedule finally arrived with an early morning tinkle from a close friend about the proposed shifting of a polling booth in the western part of Srinagar, which, according to my friend, was about three kilometres away from the originally designated spot. The move was being opposed by local people (those intending to brave the odds in order to vote), for they didn’t wish to travel three kilometres to vote, making them vulnerable to apparent threats.
Although this was precisely something to be raised with the concerned authorities, the point for readers here is the very fervent willingness of the population to participate in the process in the middle of apparent hostility and such perception of threat — it was like the coming alive of a hope against hope, that too, at the crack of dawn on D-Day. As the day progressed, the palpable indices that flowed acted as further cement on this belief of the resurrection of grassroots democracy, especially for those who exercised their franchise with strong conviction and belief, wearing it boldly on their sleeves amidst great hostility.
I wonder how those who chose to boycott the process would be feeling about the indices that flowed in. They may wish to believe that age-old theory that the people’s memory is short-lived, but in the age of digital revolution that we live in, every utterance, act and deed of someone in public life is preserved as a matter of record in a virtual cold storage, only to be used at the right time — therefore, yes, people would curiously be watching their demeanour and tenor when the state goes in for legislative or parliamentary elections.
I wish them all the very best on this note.
There is, of course, a special mention that I would not skip making — Sajad Gani Lone. By the display of his firm belief in strengthening the roots of micro-democracy, the man has emerged as a beacon of hope out of the vexatious demagoguery of ideological ambiguity and competitive secessionism.
One must give it to him — he wears his democratic heart on his sleeve. I wish the man takes a lead in taking the region and populace out of the morass of opportunistic leadership and fills in the vacuum of a brave, unequivocal and truthful leader, which Kashmir is yearning for.