Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu has very rightly diagnosed the causes of development deficit in Jammu and Kashmir as being due to terror and cross border militancy. Not only that, it has dealt a severe blow to the entire generation of the youth of this Union Territory which otherwise is promising, intelligent, aspiring and in the words of the Vice President as “bright”. People especially the youth want to break the shackles forcibly tried on them to be entangled with narrow mindedness, indifference towards reading and learning more, not indulging in sports and extracurricular activities, cultural activities, music, singing, dancing, acting and the like and instead follow the destructive path chosen by such misguided militants replete with illusions of hues of various unachievable ambitions.
The youth, even symbolically, have despite threats, shown the courage by taking part in many activities and even earned laurels at national and international levels, girls of school age leading in such activities. A group of students of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the two Union Territories recently met the Vice President at Uprashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi which speaks about their intrinsic positive, healthy and inquisitive feelings for the country and its leadership. It may be recalled that series of such interaction with the country’s VIPs and the students and the people across the country regularly take place in which the Army takes leading part and in most of the cases, sponsors such meetings.
Can it percolate deep into the psyche of those pockets in the UT especially Kashmir, who still might be having some grain of sympathy for these destructors of development and progress as all these years of militancy, brought with it only despair, death, destruction, devaluation and delusion for the general masses. Hundreds of thousands had to leave their hearths and homes, hundreds were tortured and butchered by these militants at the behest of the treacherous and belligerent neighbour, hundreds of our valiant security forces personnel got martyred whilst protecting the honour and the lives of the people. Development and progress got intensely affected towards which the Vice President referred to while talking to the young students.
Despite the vicious circle of militancy, violence, shut downs, threats, closure of schools even setting many ablaze to prevent students from going there and studying and other associated difficulties, Jammu and Kashmir continues to make progress in various fields and lot of infrastructural development has already taken place for which all those engaged in the process right from the Central Government, the then State Governments, banks and financial institutions and other concerned agencies deserve to be complimented. Most of the works associated with spreading of Railways net work and broadening and four lane(ing) of roads in Jammu and Kashmir took place during the long spell of three decades of militancy. What the Vice President hinted at is that had this militancy fortunately not been there, development deficit would have not been felt and instead too much of progress would have taken place.
Even now, there is no let up in striving for larger goals and meeting challenging targets and with the change in political and administrative set up since August 5, not only has peace and tranquillity started revisiting Jammu and Kashmir but prospects of progress and development with faster pace have started brightening. Since misinformation, rumours, falsehood, provocation and the like are other weapons used by militants for obvious reasons, the Vice President briefly but effectively shared with the visiting students, information about abrogation of Article 370 calling it as “redemption of Jammu and Kashmir on the path of progress”, while describing Jammu and Kashmir as “Crown and integral part of India”, he at the same time termed terrorism as the biggest enemy of humanity and aptly said, “Peace is a must for progress, with stress, you cannot focus on progress.”
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