Mahesh Chander Sudan
We, the people of India, have been observing general lockdown to fight unprecedented threat to our lives from Coronavirus. We adopted method of social distancing by staying indoor to break the chain of pandemic along with other scientific methods of treatment like few other countries of the world. Stay home, stay safe method turned the situation to some extent. Initial lock down of three weeks got extended for another two and half weeks to strengthen our fight against the virus. This lockdown brought all other activities to halt. We could not risk bargaining life against livelihood. The people of India stood firm in their resolve to fight the pandemic and showed absolute solidarity with Union Government.
The data presented on official channels indicates positivity. However, the resultant economic slowdown is to be dealt with diligence to revive the normal life for all citizens across the nation besides drawing an achievable plan to catch up loss of national growth. It therefore calls for all political parties to redraw their priorities to help farmers, disturbed laborers, industrialists, builders and entrepreneurs to accelerate their pace of growth to compensate losses. All States and UTs Governments may allow some incentives/concessions to energize the pace of growth. All states and UTs of India, except Jammu and Kashmir, have democratically elected Governments to handle delicate situations likely to emerge out of ongoing lockdown. This actually presents a challenging environment for local political parties of JK to share the cause of common man and earn their confidence and contact for turning possible mandate in their favor.
It is quite evident that the challenge of COVID-19 along with recent formation of UT has brought additional workload for LG and his limited team of advisors for addressing day to day concerns of the masses that at times leaves gap in governance affecting intended implementation of rules and regulations meant to achieve welfare of the society at large. Local political leaders of various shades are expected to pitch in for building constant and congenial relation between the ruler and the ruled. The present set of governance is a temporary arrangement allowed by our constitution to cater for stopgap arrangement and allowed exceptionally to last for more than six months. Republican democracy like ours advocates for formation of duly elected Government by the people, for the people and of the people and any other arrangement is not in larger interest of the state. We, the people of JK, may hardly be able to exercise our democratic right to vote for quite some time due to involved exercise of delimitation of constituencies and other administrative arrangements even if no delay is caused to extract any political mileage as experienced in the past. It is expected that political parties active in the newly created union territory of JK, whether national or local, would sensitize their cadres to be alive to the demands of the commoners who continue to suffer absence of their own government for such a long time for no fault of theirs, whom would they hold responsible for unemployment of their youths, where would they go to claim irrecoverable loss of democratic life for so many years and how about their daughters and sons who crossed employment age and will they get any waiver?
We would definitely expect our leaders to be answerable irrespective of their political lineage. The political landscape of JK comprises of both national and regional outfits from valley and Jammu regions. Few recently formed political parties have tried to occupy space created during turbulent phase that resulted out of sudden fall of elected Government of PDP+BJP and imposition of Governor and President Rule prior to territorial reorganization of state of J&K (now UT). In a nutshell, the politics of JK revolved around valley with active participation of leaders from other two regions and no visible change in this regard would be expected in future as well. There appears no possibility of mandate sweep in favor of any new outfit as it happened twice in case of AAP in Delhi. We are therefore left with options like BJP, PDP, Congress and JKNC. First two choices gave us a sour taste in the recent past and no prudent voter in my opinion would like to commit same mistake with open eyes, however politics today is less based on ethics than other material supports. Therefore, a clear competition lies between Congress and JKNC who are required to overhaul their ground level set up to achieve single point focus of creating mass support for real time conversion of mandate in their favor. Both the parties enjoy a long historical background and are quite rich in terms of ground level infrastructure. Having been formed on 28 Dec 1885 with 72 delegates in attendance at Mumbai, the party has a long history of ups and downs with leadership of international repute like Pt Nehru who could withstand international pressure in keeping India a nonaligned entity. Inter alia, the party suffers now from leadership deficiency both at Centre and State levels.
As regards JKNC, the party originally formed in the year 1932 as Muslim Conference got renamed as Jammu Kashmir National Conference in 1939 to represent all people of the state. It is an established fact that JKNC lead the politics of JK till last election when it got relegated to third position in the Assembly; however it continues to enjoy lead in representing people of the Union Territory in Union Parliament. The party is well spread across valley and Jammu region under active leadership of a tall and prominent leader, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, who remained committed to party ideology even during hard times of extreme terrorism. The party has covered both the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir through its well-connected network managed by independent Provincial Presidents. It is though evident that party enjoys ground support but recent political vacuum demands complete review of their cadre across union territory to prepare them for undertaking impending political challenges.
We, the people of JK, look forward for an early win over the present challenge of least known virus and restoration of democratic governance so that rule of law prevails for equitable growth of each and every commoner residing across the length and breadth of beautiful landscape of Jammu and Kashmir.
The author is Wing Commander (Retd)
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