Kashmir: India’s white elephant

Bad for business

It is nothing less than astounding that intelligent men who are charged with the responsibility of leading a country cannot comprehend that spending billions of dollars to maintain possession of a very small disputed territory to its north with millions of troops at the expense of their own national quality of life makes any sense at all. While millions of Indians don’t even have a toilet (as Prime Minister Modi said, “My real thought is to first have toilets and then temples”) and live in squalor in cardboard shelters, the government feeds off their meagre incomes in order to possess and control a nation that itself is kept in a dire state economically and cannot possibly pay any return on such an investment.

Moody’s has a Baa3 rating on India, the lowest investment-grade rating assigned by the company. India’s government debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest among BRICS nations and major developing countries at 67.9 in 2013, compared with 60.3 for Brazil, 42.9 for the Philippines, 24.5 for Indonesia and 34.4 for Turkey. The Indian financial system’s ability to absorb rising government debt has been diminished significantly as a result of low economic growth and high inflation.

Primarily due to energy needs, India is running an overall trade deficit of 7 per cent, yet at $8.2 billion expenditures annually, India insists upon being the world’s largest importer of arms, while 205 of its 640 districts are afflicted by political violence and unrest. This has been going on for years, and military solutions obviously offer no solutions.

Common corporate strategy is to cut production and services that are not profitable and maintain those that are, so that the company maintains its own health and vitality and has no red ink. The bottom line for India is that it needs to shrink rather than expand if it is going to be a profitable business.

Releasing the chains of bondage it holds on Kashmir would be a first logical step in that direction. Its first priority should be to develop quality of life for the people now within its borders so that they can become productive citizens and add to the wealth of the nation. Not only does it keep its own people barely hanging on to survival, it also ravages Kashmir with destructive measures and policies that serve no one. The desire to possess Kashmir is nothing but a fantasy, an extremely poor business decision, and an outrageous ego trip.

This not only humanitarian but sound business objective would involve nothing more than to allow Kashmir to hold the long-overdue referendum it was promised 67 years ago to decide whether it prefers sovereignty of India or Pakistan or else.

The example of how to do that has just been shown. The peaceful referendum held on September 18, 2104, in Scotland was a great inspiration to Kashmiris. Reuters reported that Syed Ali Geelani praised the United Kingdom for giving Scotland the vote, adding that ‘India should learn lessons from UK and honour its commitment of granting right to self-determination to people of Kashmir’. Yasin Malik echoed those sentiments by saying that the Scottish referendum is an eye opener for India. India should allow the people of Kashmir to exercise their right to self-determination. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq agreed when he said, “We hope India will also change its approach and realise the fact that people’s rights can’t be trampled upon.” Shabir Shah added what happened in Scotland should happen in Kashmir too, i.e., a free and transparent referendum to allow the people to choose.

After expressing horror at the prospect of Britain’s breakup, it is ironic that even Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj corrected herself by saying: “It is up to the people of Scotland to decide.” Really? No mention of Kashmir, of course. Good for the goose but not for the gander. Were India to allow a referendum in Kashmir, it would prove to the world that it too is a great democratic country.

Deborah Orr wrote in The Guardian on October 25, 2014, “As a Scot, I’ve found it hard not to compare the yearning for independence in Kashmir to the yearning for independence in Scotland.”

With 47.3 per cent YES votes and 55.3 per cent NO votes the referendum did not pass, but it laid down some basic principles for the freedom of expression, assembly and voting. The beauty of Scottish referendum was not that it was defeated but that the people were given the choice to have a referendum. The people of Kashmir do not want anything more than that. They want the same principle to be equally applicable to Kashmir. Let the people decide, whether they want to be the part of India or Pakistan or to remain independent.

The Scottish referendum was a transparent, free and fair one. The army was not involved. No shots were fired. No blood was shed. No arrests were made. No ban was imposed on election campaign. And there was no condition to take the oath on British constitution as is required in Kashmir.

All neutral reporters who have visited Kashmir say that the word referendum is common on the lips of Kashmiris and it stirs up excitement among them. Professor Richard Price, a well-known British historian, says, “If Kashmir somehow secured a vote for its independence, the people would probably vote to secede.” Yes, probably, but one thing should be clear: whatever the outcome of the referendum – be it India, Pakistan or independence — provided it is monitored and supervised by an internationally neutral agency, it must be binding and acceptable to all parties – India, Pakistan and Kashmiri leadership.

Undoubtedly, there is still great opportunity for peace in Kashmir, but it cannot materialise unless the people of Kashmir are permitted to have their own identity and chart their own course. The referendum in Scotland outlines the ideal path for that to take place.