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Loaded Dice? — The 2008 Elections in J&K THE purpose of writing this book in the wake of a 60-day-long agitation in Jammu region and on the eve of Assembly elections, say the authors Sant K Sharma and Dipankar Sengupta, is to make sense out of voter and constituency-related data of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a state that has tested the statesmanship of our leaders and often found them wanting. Many have argued that more autonomy and genuine democracy is the solution to the vexing issue, that is Kashmir. And yet, it is the tool of democracy and elections that has been manipulated by the Kashmir leaders to deprive Jammu, the other important part of the state, of legitimate political and economic opportunities.
It must be added hurriedly that this difference is not related to logistics, connectivity or terrain. The authors have painstakingly brought out the facts about the geography, population and development. Jammu region covers an area of little over 26,293 sq km while Kashmir has only 15, 948 sq km. Moreover, the average area of a constituency in Kashmir is 348 sq km while that of Jammu region is 710 km. Since the Assembly election came close on the heels of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board-related agitation in which for the first time Jammu scored a victory of sorts over the Kashmiri intransigence, the authors have rightly tried to make out if democracy can replicate the ‘Amarnath victory’ in elections. The answer obviously is a resounding "No". The reason can be found in genesis of the Kashmir problem, the peculiar composition of the state, the hostile relations between the late Maharaja Hari Singh and Sheikh Abdullah and Pandit Jawahalal Nehru’s antagonism towards the ruler and his irrational faith in the Sheikh to demonstrate the fallacy of the ‘two nation’ theory. New Delhi did not decode the signals when Sheikh Abdullah declared in October 1947 that accession to India could wait for there was the important task of transforming the existing order. Thus, Abdullah began his rule without any constitutional checks and balances, even without a representative legislature when the candidatures of a Jammu-based political party were arbitrarily rejected. Since Kashmir possessed the power to cast aspersion on the question of accession, its leaders used it as leverage not only against accountability but also against Jammu. Thus, Assembly constituencies remain irrationally constituted and the 73 Constitutional Amendment stalled to perpetuate arbitrary allocation of funds and governance. The authors have also tried to analyse the leadership, or the lack of it, of Jammu for securing its just rights. It is in this context that the limited success of the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti agitation is significant and has the potential of a new beginning. It needs to be remembered that it is only the Jammu region that is enamored of its 19th-century identity of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir has never been proud of it and has used the past 60 years to assert its numerical strength and power derived from separatist threats. The fact that even in the matter of the number of districts Kashmir has the need to maintain an edge, the recommendations of Wazir Commission be damned, indicates that Jammu has little hope of securing its just and democratic rights within the existing framework. Finally, there was no need for the authors to do a hurried job of the book. Competent editors could have made it much more better reading. It is an important work and would be needed even after the new Assembly has been constituted by that generation from Jammu, which is unable to relate to the conquests of the regions bordering Central Asia and consequently the grand concept of Jammu and Kashmir. This generation finds that its legitimate aspirations continue to be thwarted at the hands of unscrupulous state and central leaders.
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The authors back their
claim with data that defies logic. For example, there are on average
83,363 voters in each of the 37 Assembly constituencies in Jammu region,
whereas in Kashmir region, this average for 46 constituencies falls down
by 12,478 votes per constituency to 70,884. One does not need to be a
mathematician to realise that if the voter-wise size of the
constituencies had been the same, the composition of the Assembly in
terms of the two regions would be different.