Protests for tap water and teachers in J&K now

SRINAGAR: Over eighteen years after the first gun rattled in Srinagar, civil liberty is not the sole issue that sends people out on the roads. People now want the basic infrastructure, eroded or damaged over the years, to be restored. Last week, the Srinagar-Baramulla highway was blocked by protesting school children, who were demanding teachers.

Most of the colleges are open but the classes are yet to start as most of the berths are vacant. Safe drinking water has all along remained a problem and every day, there are many demonstrations seeking better tap water.

Most of the infrastructure that was built in the post-partition era was either destroyed or poorly maintained. The proxy war took all the attention while capacity building lagged. All of a sudden, these issues seem to have snowballed into a crisis that, in certain instances, created law-and-order problems.

“There are problems almost everywhere. Every day, there are delegations seeking reconstruction of a school, upgradation of a centre or a bridge,” said one senior functionary of the government.

Now, there are strong voices for restoring the institutional infrastructure. Most of the central government offices that were operating in Kashmir fled to Jammu during the years of militancy. “The temple city is actually the capital of J&K now because it houses almost all the civilian offices of the Union government. Most of them are not ready to resume operations from their pre-militancy locations,” said one senior state government officer.

Though exports from Srinagar stand at Rs 1,700 crores — mostly handicrafts and fruits — the exporters have shifted base to Delhi and other places for lack of institutional infrastructure. It is due to a tie-up between JK Bank and the Union Commerce ministry that offices like DGFT, ECGC and various EPC would be operating their offices in premises offered by the bank.

Last fortnight, BSNL CGM started operating from Srinagar for summer months after the intervention of Prof Saif ud Din Soz, Union Water Resources Minister. But most of the Central government offices, including RBI, Nabard, NHPC and PGCI, operate from Jammu with Srinagar having just liaison cells.

Unlike officials in the security grid who link demands for restoring the halcyon day infrastructure with normalcy and restoration of peace, most of the politicians and experts do not think so. Says Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, a legislator: “The alienation is still high. When there are only 28 lakh voters in Kashmir’s 57 lakh population unlike Jammu where you have 30 lakh voters in a population of 44 lakh, it means alienation is deep rooted and huge.”

Even civil liberty activists do not think the protests over state’s failure in providing basic amenities are linked to peace or improved human rights situation. On Monday, CRPF personnel beat students and even molested a girl student for protesting against the routine daily searches of the buses which delays them on their way to college.