Investment Won’t Bring Peace to Kashmir
India’s government says closer integration is needed in order to develop the restive region. That’s either cynical or naive.
How much will that Dal Lake property be worth?
Photographer: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images
India’s Parliament has rubber-stamped the government’s decision to end Kashmir’s 70 years of autonomy and turn it into a “union territory” closely supervised by New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah, is more than anyone else seen as the motive force behind this change, one that pushes forward the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda of a Hindu nationalist renaissance in India.
But, speaking in Parliament’s upper house about the legal changes, Shah framed the issue instead as one of “development.” Because of autonomy, Shah argued, “corruption increased in the state, no development could take place. ... Where are the hospitals? Where are the doctors and nurses? ... Which famous doctor would go and live there and practice? He can’t own a land or house nor can his children vote.”