OPINION | Will scrapping of Art 370 be good for Kashmir?
OPINION | Aug 09, 2019:
By Ankush Kurkalang
Recently Article 370 and Article 35A were scrapped and the state of Jammu & Kashmir was bifurcated into two union territories of 'Ladakh' and "Jammu & Kashmir".
Till these existed, according to Article 370 Jammu & Kashmir enjoyed a separate constitution, a separate state flag and autonomy over the internal administration of the state; moreover Article 35A empowered the Jammu & Kashmir's state legislature to define "Permanent residents" of the state and provided special rights and privileges to those permanent residents. These, instead of helping in growth and development of the state, were only being exploited for the personal benefit of the selected few.
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Till the 5th August 2019, Jammu & Kashmir's state legislature remained anti-women, anti-education, anti-progressive. Till the existence of these two articles, if a girl from Kashmir married a Indian citizen from any other state or Union Territory, then she would lose her permanent residentship, lose the right to buy land there, lose the right to vote and her children also would suffer all those.
Also, up until these were not scrapped, their legislature did not pass on the right to free education for children upto 16 years of age, whereas this law is applicable in all the other states and Union Territories of India.
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The tourism potential of Jammu & Kashmir is abundant, which could have been exploited for revenue generation of the state, but till 5th August 2019, no big industrial houses from other parts of India were allowed to buy land there and most of the big industries there were controlled by few who always exploited the residents by selling almost everything at a very high cost.
Thanks to the abrogation of these articles — now women will enjoy same rights as men, now children will also be provided free education upto 16 years of age, furthermore not only big industrialists would be free to operate but also they'll generate employment in the form of tourist guides, cab drivers, managers, chefs, engineers and much more. To top it all, with so much room for development, professionals from various fields will venture into a safer environment, be it doctors, professors, school teachers, many more.
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Thanks to Bifurcation, the meddling of Pakistan won't engulf Ladakh into it anymore. As for their meddling in Jammu & Kashmir, now our forces can be focused more accurately at it so as to handle the situation more efficiently with lesser casualties as compared to before.
Certain section of the people complain that this decision was not democratic and could have been solved in a more subtle manner. But do they realize, that it was our subtle ways which had escalated the problems to reach where they were till 5th August 2019; do they realize Kashmiri Pandit exodus was not democratic. Suppose in a family of 5 which has one father, one mother and 3 children, the parents want to send their children to school for education, but all three children do not want to go to school. Now as the three are in majority and going by the way of democracy, it would imply that they should not go to school. But is this a favourable situation? Irrespective of this example, do such complainers not know that this decision was taken up in Rajya Sabha where the present govt. does not even enjoy the majority, yet most of the parties (even those not in alliance) voted in favour of this decision.
Almost entire India is genuinely happy by scrapping of these two articles, as for the rest, hopefully they will be happy too once they see all the growth and development in years to come with better equality, education and employment opportunities for both the new territories
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