Southern Kashmir’s Tral in Pulwama district has for long retained several dubious distinctions in the last 31 years of armed insurgency in the valley. This was the crucible from where Burhan Wani to Zakir Musa, and scores of top-notch militants emerged. Wani’s death in an encounter in July 2016 led to a four-month-long street turbulence in which over 70 demonstrators and arsonists got killed and thousands, civilians as well as security forces personnel, sustained injuries.
Dadsara, a village in Tral, is said to have created the maximum number of militants among all villages and towns across the valley. It was because of the people of Dadsara and other villages that a two-lakh strong procession gathered to form Wani’s funeral procession. Four years later, Dadsara is singing to a different tune.
On December 8, three local cadres of ‘Albadar’ outfit-Merajuddin Lone, Umer Ali and Owais Farooq- were killed in an encounter with Police and security forces at Tiken in Pulwama. One of them was a resident of Dadsara. The bodies were buried as per the Covid-19 protocol in the distant Baramulla area in northern Kashmir.
Unlike on scores of similar killings and encounters in the past, Dadsara and all other villages in Tral were calm in the morning after. Hardly anyone gathered to offer condolences to the militant’s family and nobody demanded burial the dead body at the local cemetery, let alone an effervescent funeral procession and a gun salute at the tombstone. There was no shutdown in Tral.
The voter turnout was thinner in Pulwama and its contiguous district of Shopian as compared to eight other districts in the valley in the District Development Council elections. However, the scenes of defiance, demonstration and protest, that marred over a dozen elections after 1990, were nowhere there across Kashmir. The residents of Pulwama still remember the separatists’ anti-election campaign, coupled with terror attacks, which subverted several democratic processes in the past 24 years particularly in that district.
“In many elections, we saw militants attacking the polling parties. Even in 2014, a polling party returning with EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) was subjected to a fatal attack. I remember senior Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Abdul Gani Lone reaching here with their Police guards armed with AK-47 rifles like the Ministers’ escorts and provoking the people to fail the elections. Several times, I remember, there were violent demonstrations and teargas shelling by Police. Not a single such incident has been reported from anywhere in the valley during the DDC elections.”
One-odd incident of a militant attack occurred in Srinagar where some unidentified gunmen shot dead the personal security officer of the People’s Democratic Party activist Haji Pervaiz.
This is not the only manifestation of change in the last over one year. It has been widely noticed that many of the Twitter handles and Facebook accounts, which used to bully, troll and intimidate anybody not toeing the Pakistani line until May this year, have silently disappeared. While hundreds of such accounts have been removed by their users after the Cyber Cell of the Jammu and Kashmir Police began filing FIRs over ‘anti-national’ and ‘subversive’ content, many others have deleted objectionable and intimidating posts.
According to senior Police officials, the security and the intelligence agencies had, immediately after the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in a car bomb attack, identified all the vehicles used by the “militants and their Pakistani handlers”.
“First of all, we called or detained temporarily some of such elements after August 2019. Secondly, we shut down the internet for a purpose. We knew about their plans to create a mayhem like 2016, 2010 and 2080. Thirdly, we let them off but made it clear that the age-old practice of running an anti-India tirade alongside armed insurgency wouldn’t be tolerated any more. Most of them responded positively and stopped indulging in subversive and anti-Indian activities,” said an officer.
The officer referred particularly to the Twitter accounts of two women activists, one a journalist based in Mumbai and another a Kashmiri scholar in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), to prove his point that the world was “misled” by the social media, as well as the foreign press, with regard to the “real situation” in Kashmir after August 5, 2019.
“For months they ran a tirade that we had jailed and tortured thousands. They reported that the Kashmiris were defiant, and thus suppressed, and that there was lockdown and curfew. As a matter of fact, we had detained less than 4,000 persons of proven subversive history. We have released almost all of them. Our lockdown was for less than two months. In October, November and December 2019, there was a shutdown sponsored by the separatists and the terrorists. They gunned down wholesalers and fruit dealers and spread a wave of terror to ensure that the signs of normalcy do not go out. This election called their bluff and exposed everybody,” said the same officer.
(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)
Decoding recovery path of the Indian economy
Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani
No one ever thought of the scale and magnitude of disruption that was caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the aftermath, the resurgence would be equally trying especially in a country like ours with a complex economic framework. However, we need to applaud the government for paving the way for an impressive recovery, with a judicious mix of spending and structural reforms. The outcome of the efforts visible in the Q2 numbers which showed a single-digit economic contraction of 7.5 per cent as compared to 23.9 per cent in Q1. The figure beats the global average, where according to an analysis, 49 economies declined at an average of 12.4 per cent.
The jubilations and optimism mirrored in the financial markets, business houses, and the government. If the current optimism and rally gets carried unabated then as per the official and unofficial forecasts, India’s economy is likely to return to the pre-Covid levels by the end of the current fiscal year which is a much shorter timeframe than expected. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prediction of a positive growth in the H2 FY21 is substantiated by the fact that in the recently published Q2 data, the manufacturing PMI is above 50 for the fourth straight month which is only 11 percentage points lower than pre-Covid-19 levels. It is worth noting that unemployment levels are currently on a decline; the 6.7 per cent the unemployment rate for September was lower than the pre-Covid-19 level of 7.6 per cent in February.
Like always the world has taken notice of the positives and showed faith in India’s story once again as visible in the growth numbers of segments such as foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign policy investment, and corporate bond market inflows. It all points to strong investor faith in India’s economic resilience. Besides, upwards revisions by rating agencies in India’s GDP forecast are all repeating the same story that we have kicked in the rebound phase.
The ripple effect
The unleashing of structural reforms and the stimulus packages announced by the government did take effect in various sectors as the fiscal response has been calibrated to reap maximum benefit. The one that stands out is the extension of the 100 percent credit guarantee scheme to 27 stressed sectors. Besides, fiscal stimulus and tax rebates for growth-critical sectors, such as housing, would have spill-over effects, thus indirectly boosting demand-led growth. Reforms and timely fiscal interventions in other critical sectors are already showing positive results: the Gross Value Added (GVA) for three sectors– agriculture, manufacturing, and utilities– has been positive in Q2, as compared to just one, the agriculture sector, in Q1 this year. Similarly, the expansion of production linked incentive (PLI) schemes –that give incentives to firms– worth?1.46 lakh crore for 10 new sectors will give a boost to the manufacturing sector, and result in long-term benefits for the economy.
The liberalization of the notoriously rigid formal labour market would expedite India’s upward movement in the ease of doing business rankings, and attract further investments., India has moved up 79 positions in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business’ rankings since 2014.
Fears of fiscal deficit
The stimulus packages and therefore, additional non-budgeted spending –along with falling tax revenue,– by the government to wean off the COVID crisis has led to pushing India’s budget gap wider to 8 percent of GDP in the current financial year, more than double the targeted 3.5percent. The expanded support package– to rescue companies and save jobs amid the pandemic–given by the government amounts to 15 per cent of the economy, adding to the global stimulus that has touched $12trillion. The fear that the fiscal deficit will loom large on the government in the future to manage fiscal prudence is not unfounded. However, the finance minister has assured time and again that fiscal deficit fears won’t derail government spending as government spending is important to bring the economy on track. The forthcoming union budget will focus on public spending on Infrastructure to ensure sustainable economic revival. There is a dire need to reinstitute Infrastructure Development Bank for long term funding of infrastructure projects.
Globally countries that have committed to stimulus spending as high as 20 per cent of their GDP is now resorting to additional taxation, helping fuel a recovery in the economy. In India, the government is finding other routes to keep fuelling the economic engine as the FM said that the government will push PSUs to accelerate spending as the government can’t afford to curb spending at this juncture of economic crisis.
Authorities to the rescue
A multipronged policy response — the efforts and intelligent balancing act done– by the apex bank in India, the RBI, during the Covid crisis is praised by the government and the people of India, equally. The reduction of key interest rates along with the restructuring of outstanding loans, moratorium of given to the borrowers and extension of on-Tap TLTRO to 26 stressed sectors under the Emergency Credit Linked Guarantee Scheme(ECLGS 2.0) are some of the strategies that has helped the businesses tide over the crisis.
The way RBI is trying to resolve the shadow banking crisis that has plagued the country since 2018 has found many takers including the government. The government on the other hand is rooting the idea of privatising a couple of state-run banks that have received cabinet approvals.
Conclusion
The year 2020 may not have belonged to India, but the future certainly belongs to this nation for its resilience, faith, and sheer optimism.
(The author is the national president of the industry body, ASSOCHAM and NAREDCO. The views expressed are personal.)