DISEQUILIBRIUM

When or why not, is the big question that has dominated mind space
ever since the rag tag bobtail Indian cricket side has been getting a
thrashing in Oz. The big four have flopped miserably in Australia,
their slowing, even maladroit reflexes being caught out by young
muscular Australian fast bowlers. Though the highest wicket taker, I
must confess was an older swing bowler called Ben Hilfenhaus, but this
too threw into stark relief the fact that our aging batters were found
short in terms of technical exactitude. After the ignominy of getting
bowled repeatedly in Australia, I actually thought that Rahul Dravid
who is probably the smartest of the big four – Sachin Tendulkar, VVS
Laxman, Virender Sehwag and himself – would chuck it up at the end of
the final Test. But he chose not to and this was most baffling.

Dravid had given up on the Indian captaincy most abruptly after
winning the series in England when we toured in 2007. I was certain
that he and probably Laxman would call it quits because they had
dominated the game over time, made a name for themselves and would not
like to hang on to the last vestiges of fame and glory. They have
nothing to prove to anyone. Their defining stand at the Eden against
the Aussies in 2001 is part of cricketing folklore. Seen as the
cricketing version of the gunfight at OK Corral, they enacted the
roles of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday with great distinction.

Unfortunately Sachin Tendulkar, a great servant to Indian cricket, may
also be overstaying his welcome. The world and I believe that he is
one innings away from regaining form and more importantly scoring his
100th international century. Alas, we are still waiting. The wait is
now getting excruciatingly painful. He has two more shots at doing it,
if Dhonis’s rotation policy doesn’t scupper it, that is. Logic
suggests that Tendulkar should smash a breath taking century and then
announce his retirement from one day cricket. The Sydney Cricket
Ground also known as Sachin Cricket Ground will be a fitting venue for
such an event. In fact, Sachin should do what Dravid and Laxman could
not get themselves to do – call it quits.

It pains all us cricket junkies to watch the Fab Four making mockery
of their collective ability by coming out again and again and then
playing from memory, pale shadows of great cricketers from the not so
distant past. It hurts all us junkies to watch the perplexed
expressions on their faces when they are bowled or given out leg
before. The expression is one of wonderment. What they should realize
is that time stops for no one and cricket at the end of the day also
involves physicality. In Viru’s case this is most apparent – a typical
hand-eye coordination player with no foot movement whatsoever - he has
proved to be the most destructive batsman of his generation. But
something is clearly amiss. The famed hand-eye coordination and the
innate ability to pick the length and smash the ball to any part of
the field with his customary derring do is missing. Maybe even
forgotten.

India does not play Test cricket for a long time this year. I think
the next series is against Sri Lanka in the Emerald Isle around the
time the T 20 World Cup is played there. Of course, India has a full
home season with the English playing a four Tests on a longish tour
after a long time, followed by the Kiwis over next winter. The big
three will certainly be closer to 40, their skills they would like to
believe undiminished, but flesh on the whole much weaker. Many great
players have understood the need to go at the peak. Some cases in
point in India are Vijay Merchant and Sunny Gavaskar. On a bunsen in
Bangalore against Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, Gavaskar battled all
alone only to be adjudged caught off his elbow virtually on the
periphery of one of his greatest centuries. There and then at 37 with
at least another year left in the tank, he decided it was time to go.
He did play the 1987 World Cup after that, but quit the longer format
with that amazing innings replete with perfectitude.

Tendulkar has had a glittering career, some say that despite the
mountain of runs, he may have underachieved personally. Say in
comparison to Brian Charles Lara, there are those who believe that he
may have shown longevity, but in terms of quality of runs, it is not
the same thing. This is not to belittle ‘tiny ten’, but there may be
the odd demon that the little big fella must be wrestling with at
night in the solitude of his room. Winning causes is arguably the
single biggest bugbear, just as consistency has been. If my memory
serves me right and if I am not wrong, Tendulkar has never scored 500
runs in a Test series. Tendulkar can walk on water for all us fans and
nobody dare take potshots at him. But the time has come to assess
whether the fab four with Sachin at the vanguard has to make way for
the young turks and newbies. India plays Sri Lanka, England and New
Zealand in Test cricket, all in the sub continent later this year. We
needed to groom the next lot of batters here and now. The crop looks
promising, more so if we are playing at home. Gautam Gambhir can be
the new fulcrum around whom the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma,
Manoj Tiwary, Maneesh Pandey and Cheteshwar Pujara will have to form
the nucleus of a young India.

It is clear that Mahendra Singh Dhoni is obviously uncomfortably with
Sachin and Viru in the one day side. He wanted to invest in youth just
as he has done in the past and succeed. The selectors, I hear didn’t
allow him that leeway. He wanted both Viru and Sachin out, but they
were foisted on him in Oz. A combination of abject performances and
disquiet in the dressing is not welcome. On the last tour of Oz, India
won the tri series against the same opposition and did so in style.
The team for most part was youthful though Tendulkar played two great
innings in the two finals against Oz. Five years later it is
imperative that Sachin gets the monkey off his back. And then walks
into the sunset. You have given us much enjoyment, transported us into
an unknown orbit of delight and we have lived the game with you, but
score the hundred and quit. No cricketer is bigger than the game, this
is the game that we love and adore. The time is here and now, go when
you want to not when a group of former cricketers, lesser mortals than
you – also called selectors – want you to. Otherwise the old comment
of the there being an elephant in the room and nobody wanting to
acknowledge its presence will come crawling back to haunt one and all.
Learn from Sunny, play the game and go at the top.

-MAIL TODAY,26TH FEB,2012 

VICTIM OF HIS OWN HYPE

When perception meets reality in a dark and dank corridor, it turns
into a very scary proposition. Reality is the over riding theme that
emerges as the door opens to show light. This harsh light of reality
in many ways is what Vijay Mallya is facing these days. A prisoner and
even victim of his self generated hype and larger than life persona,
Mallya's warts lie exposed. Yes, perception about him has rapidly
intertwined with reality to show how a wealthy man needs financial
crutches to set his business in order. VJM as Vijay Mallya is known is
an extremely successful businessman. You wouldn't think so if you are
watching telly or reading the papers these days. Mallya has come a
long way from the time that he raced fast cars in Barrackpore near
Kolkata with arm candy in tow. His father Vittal Mallya ran a tight
but spiffy liquor empire.

After Mallya senior's untimely death, young Vijay Mallya all of 27
took a series of well calibrated decisions to emerge as the undiputed
liquor baron of India. Slowly and systematically, he exited non core
businesses hiving off and hawking Kissan and Berger Paints ($66
million) other brands. As he once told me on board his Gulfstream jet
winging our way to Kolkata - I am not a corporate museum, I have to
constantly rejig my portfolio and reinvent to become bigger. It worked
well for Mallya, as he assiduously worked at chipping away at his
rivals in the liquor business. Finally, he owned everything from
Millennium Alcobev to Shaw Wallace, he had swept all before him and
conquered not just his rivals, but in many ways all the demons within
.

On self styled Dubai based billionaire Manu Chabbria's death in 2002,
Mallya made a hostile bid for Shaw Wallace thereby culminating a
bitter rivalry with MRC. Mallya's genius was to constantly capture the
moment in the liquor and lifestyle segment. Long years ago, while
flicking through a United Breweries archive, Mallya found a brand
called Kingfisher which dated back to 1865 and used to be then
transported in hogsheads. He liked and loved the vibrancy of the
brandname, asked his father for a million bucks to relaunch it, was
turned down, then revived it later and turned it into a mega brand
which enjoys enormous saliency with Indians around the world.
Kingfisher transcended everything and emerged as a new lifestyle brand
for neophyte Indians.

Stories about his passion for fast cars, big yachts, faster and bigger
planes, lavish parties which identified with his persona and king of
good time image has now become a millstone around his neck. With the
acquisition in 2007 of the world's fourth largest scotch maker - Whyte
and Mackay for 595 pounds sterling - Mallya enlarged his swathe.
Playboy or no playboy, Mallya has shown his shrewd side repeatedly
over the years. Till he decided that his nose was bigger than Jet
Airways's Naresh Goyal. That is where he went wrong. By entering a
cash burning, bruising business like aviation where variables like
fuel cost which are as high 40 per cent can have a debilitating impact
on the financial health of the airline. More so in a high crude
environment, where the airline business is much akin to walking a high
wire without a safety net below. Mallya has learnt to his chargin that
the good times aren’t permanent. Despite showing his intent and
ploughing in as much as Rs 980 crore over the last 12 months,
Kingfisher Airlines has been on a wing and a prayer for most part
hurtling from one crisis to another.

What started out as the best flying experience in Indian skies has
slowly but surely degenerated into a farcical play out of flights
being cancelled, customers stranded and a general air of despondency
surrounding the airline. The “guest experience” included all the
frills – valets, live in-flight satellite television, goody bags and
the smartest air hostesses in the sky. But over time his ego and
ambition got the better of him. He placed an order for 50 Airbus
aircraft - A320, A330, A350 and A380 aircraft. An embattled Mallya has
managed to keep the airline afloat despite all the travails and
tribulations. But by asking the government banks for yet another
handout, he has crossed the lakshman rekha. As civil aviation minister
Ajit Singh said – Mr Mallya needs to understand that Kingfisher is not
Air India. Yes, distortionary taxes on aviation turbine fuel and
skewed policies have played a played a part in his decline, but the
reality of not focusing on his business and allowing it to drift have
devastated the balance sheet, leaving a sea of red behind. How could
he not meet statutory obligations like tax deducted at source and
provident fund payouts? This is most galling about the way his airline
business has been run.
What are the options before Mallya? He needs to show intent. He needs
to show his commitment. Will he hawk his 42.5 per cent stake in Force
India to his partner Subrata Roy Sahara or will he put one of his
smaller companies like MCF on the block and raise cash. Mallya has
shown that he is combative and a survivor. He needs to understand that
he is trapped in a sector which is constantly in turmoil due to the
exorbitant cost of ATF. Like moths to the flame, innumerable players
in India’s short but turbulent aviation sector history have come a
cropper. Open skies is all very well, but when everyone including my
aunt want to fly the skies then one can easily liken it to the old
adage of ‘pigs too can fly’. Over the years, India’s remarkable
journey in the quest to make the tryst with open skies has resulted in
so many casualties, that sometimes it does seem a bit odd. The
aviation business in any case is not for the faint hearted.
Increasingly in India and even the rest of the world it is a mug's
game.
In the Hollywood film Crazy Heart about a fading country western
singer Jeff Bridges sings – It is funny how falling seems like flying.
Vijay Mallya has to fly again not just for himself but for the
sector’s good. But he has to do it on his own, without the government
playing nanny.

-MAIL TODAY, 25TH FEB'12

CRUDE THE NEW HOT BUTTON

From the inner most recesses in Tehran’s secretive world of
spymasters, a call was given to launch strikes against Israeli
diplomats around the world. A tit for tat kind of reaction, hitherto
not known to come out of Iran. The shadowy Iranian Quds Force is being
seen as the new action force targeting Israelis. Iran of course has
been shrugging off all that the Israelis have thrown at them by saying
that it is nothing more than posturing and filibustering on their
part. Adding that what the Israelis are saying lacks credibility and
smacks of slander. Even as we wonder what the truth is, a Israeli
newspaper reported the Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon naming
Brigadier-General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, a
covert arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, as the mastermind of
this neo attack strategy.

Yaalon went on to say that Soleimani is subordinate to the Iranian
leaders and is responsible for the special force and for subversive
activity against everybody by coordinating operations with Lebanon's
Hezbollah guerrillas who are now viewed as a proxy for Tehran. Lending
credence to this new theory, the United States blamed the same Quds
Force in 2011 for an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador
to Washington

Even as this state of play had the world on an edge after the
coordinated attacks in Tbilisi and New Delhi, the failed Bangkok
bombing also at 3.15 IST sent shivers up everyone’s spine. The result
was seismic reverberations in the global crude futures market. So,
oil is on the boil again. Any armed conflict in the middle east is a
surefire recipe for a further spike in global oil prices. Crude
futures markets are already on fire. And India is caught between a
rock and a hard place. It needs weapons and defence armaments from
Israel and curiously 11 per cent of all our crude requirements come
from Iran. Delicious irony, no?

Throw in the bit about India’s natural unstinted support for west
Asian nations and you have a heady mix. Mavens in the foreign and
finance ministries are scratching their heads wondering which side
they should tilt. With the war having arrived on our shores and blood
being spilled, India is viewing the entire scenario with great
consternation. At the core of it all is the politics of oil, rather
than the economics of oil. Iran pumps out 3.5 million barrels of oil
daily.

Of this 3.5 million barrels, as much as 600,000 barrels goes to six
top EU nations while the majority is sucked up by energy deficit
nations like China and India. What has complicated already elevated
crude prices is not just the emergence of Iran as a big boy on the
nuclear stage, but equally the concerns coming out of Sudan where a
newly divided South Sudan is accusing its northern counterpart of
seizing 2.4 million barrels of oil. With two flashpoints on the global
crude map, the balance of power has been disturbed. What is perhaps
most pertinent is that Israel normally trigger happy to take action –
both deterrent and offensive – is not pressing the hot button yet.

Though it has been ratcheting up the rhetoric. Defending its people
and land is a way of life for insular Israel, but perhaps a nuke armed
Iran is a suitable enough reason not to go ballistic. Or perhaps the
US is mollifying Israel and telling it not to cross the Rubicon.
Crossing the Rubicon at this juncture can have cataclysmic
consequences for the world economy. A bellicose Iran will not take
things lying down. What has happened in Afghanistan, before that
Kuwait and now in Iraq could well see retaliation and reprisals from
Iran.

The world teeters. For India it is as I said extremely bad news,
because not only do we get it in the neck politically since both Iran
and Israel are our friends, but we suffer acutely economically. Just
when the inflation genie has been wrestled back into the bottle and
mothballed, comes the crude spike which may end up as a super spike.
Cassandras have been screaming from the rooftops that crude is headed
northwards to new gravity defying levels. Its economic impact is
scary. India will obviously import inflation given that 80 per cent or
thereabouts of its crude requirements are out sourced. Empirical
evidence suggests that a $10 increase in crude prices can shave off as
much as 20 to 40 basis points from an importing nation’s Gross
Domestic Product. Goldman Sachs Asia Economic Analyst reckons for
India it will be closer to 0.2 percentage point.

Every dollar increase in crude prices translates in to a 50 paise
increase in petro product prices here in India if the Government
allows a pass through. The Indian crude basket on February 15 was a
sky rocketing $118.35, a mix of sweet and sour crude. Now comes the
tricky part, as of April-December, the under recoveries for oil
marketing companies is Rs 97,313 crore. Wait, there is more pain. For
the full year ending March 31, 2012, the projected figure is Rs
140,000 crore, eating at the very innards of public sector oil
companies. The picture gets grimmer when one factors in a loss of Rs
12.31 per litre of diesel, Rs 378 per LPG cylinder, Rs 28.77 per litre
of kerosene and Rs 1.50 per litre of petrol. This makes for a Rs 465
crore loss borne by oil marketing companies daily due to subsidies.
All wreaking havoc on the already soft underbelly of a rapidly
decelerating Indian economy.

Oil prices are rising in any case on furious demand from Asia led by
an ever hungry China, the world’s second biggest crude consumer. So,
while geo politics is being blamed for $120 levels for crude, Asia’s
huge appetite is acting as a catalyst. China’s crude imports increased
7.4 percent from a year ago to 23.41 million metric tons in January, a
record high, according to preliminary data from Beijing-based General
Administration of Customs on February 10. Don’t forget, that the US
economy is beginning to chug along nicely too.
Forewarned they say is forewarned. When the head of the National
Iranian Oil Company, Ahmad Qalehbani said that oil was headed for $150
in the last week of January, the world should have paid attention. Any
conflagration in the middle east will leave behind an economic
wasteland. Pray and hope.

-MAIL TODAY,FEBRUARY 19,2012

Retrofit

On February 3, a day after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Department of Telecom dashed off a missive to the telecom regulator TRAI asking it to give its recommendations on the auction of the spectrum that would be surrendered by the operators within 60 days. Moreover, by June 2, the operators holding the invalidated licenses need to physically hand over the spectrum held by them. It is unlikely that the government will file a review petition against the judgment relating to 123 cancelled licenses. Equally, the Government is faced with a huge embarrassment and the legacy of cancelled licenses will haunt UPA-II forever. However, there is every possibility of the Government seeking more time to roll out a fair and transparent auction. Remember that the successfully conducted 2010 3G auction took 688 days.

There are multiple issues and ramifications which the judgment has thrown into stark relief:

*Why did the Government not defend the illegality of A Raja’s action on January 10, 2008? Smartly, it may have sensed the court’s mood. The entire lot of seven steps laid out by the Supreme Court in Section 70 (i)-(vii) relating to A Raja’s unconstitutional actions which led to the cancellation remained unchallenged during the hearing. The Government has restricted itself to merely describing the history of telecom reforms, spectacular growth in telecom services, increase in tele density, and merely the fact that giving away licenses in 2008 at 2001 determined prices cannot be called unconstitutional. In fact, it was argued, and the court notes in paragraph 49 “that the policy decision taken by the DoT for migration of CDMA service providers by NDA Government in 2003 was “neither illegal nor unconstitutional”. But that is where it ended on merits. No arguments were offered for A Raja’s actions between 2007 and 2008. The Government, however, argued, and the court notes that “the power of judicial review should be exercised with great care and circumspection and the court should not ordinarily interfere with the policy decisions of the Government in financial matters”.

* The judges agreed with this contention of the Government but gave detailed reasons including “when it is clearly demonstrated before the court that policy framed by the state or its agencies/instrumentality and/or its implementation is contrary to public interest is violative of the constitutional principles, it is the duty of the court to exercise its jurisdiction in larger public interest and reject the stock plea of the state that the scope of judicial reviews should not be exceeded beyond the recognized parameters”.

* Even famed lawyers arguing for the various companies restricted arguments to issues such as “TRAI did not recommendation auctions” or that “UPA only continued the policy from before” and therefore these licenses should not be subject to questioning. Some cited the Prime Minister’s speech at FICCI’s India Telecom Summit and others hung on to national interest, foreign investment and benefit to the people at large. They even argued equities by demonstrating investments, cheaper tariffs, and unfair treatment per se against A Raja since their clients had been “pushed down” in priority due to the distortions in the first-come-first-served. In effect absolutely no defence was offered on the issue in front of the court which related to the multiple illegal acts of A Raja, loss to the exchequer, violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, illegal advancement of cut-off date, last minute manipulation of first-come-first-served coupled with insider information to benefit particular companies or violation of procedure such as avoiding a meeting of the full Telecom Commission or simply following the TRAI Act when deviating from Recommendations of the TRAI.

*TRAI put out a detailed affidavit and argued when put in a corner that DoT should have only made a decision on spectrum allocation after determining the full availability of spectrum. TRAI also argued and demonstrated that DoT violated the TRAI Act by not seeking its mandatory recommendations before introducing new service providers under section 11 (1) (a) second and fourth proviso. In fact, TRAI admitted that it had initiated action against several new entrants for cancellation of licenses since they failed to meet roll-out obligations. None of these helped either the Government’s case or that of private operators. Finally Government made several statements which the court was quick to seize upon. These included Kapil Sibal’s press release of 29-1-2011, which the court had quoted in great detail in paragraph 57. The statement already admits that spectrum will not be bundled with licenses in the future, that there will be no concept of contracted spectrum and spectrum will only be made available through a market driven process in the future. That even spectrum beyond 1.4 MHz will be given to licenses that are found valid but at prices determined under the new policy. It said “we need to seriously consider adoption of an auction process for allocating and pricing of spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz” while ensuring that there is adequate competition in the auction process.

*With the Government itself conceding that auction was the way going forward then any defence against the process of auction whether level playing field or its adverse impact on prices, had no chance of surviving since those would have had to come from the Government itself. No wonder then Supreme Court trashed the TRAI for its Recommendations, calling them “lopsided and contrary to the decisions made by the Council of Ministers, as well as one that overlooked the main objectives of National Telecom Policy 1999 regarding a transparent process for allocating spectrum”.

*The court’s observations on the issue of first-come-first-served, which it describes as open to “misused by unscrupulous people who are only interested in garnering maximum financial benefit and have no respect for the constitutional ethos and values” resonates strongly on the political landscape of this country. What the court did by cancelling licenses is truly take the fight against against corruption to its logical culmination.

*Additionally the Government has survived by the skin of its teeth on the issue of collective responsibility.

In conclusion, given the fact that the Supreme Court has in one shot done DoT’s unfinished work of pursing licence cancellations and left the PM and FM out of its ambit, it is a responsible judiciary which has acted as the instrumentality against rampant graft which thrived courtesy a confluence of politician-bureaucracy-big business nexus. As it is famously said “Be careful what you ask for. You may actually get it!” The judiciary has given the people of India a famous victory. One which tears down the edifice of corruption.

-MAIL TODAY, 14TH FEB'12

DISEQUILIBRIUM - MAIL TODAY 12th Feb

Kashmir is where I was born, Kashmir is what no one can take out of me, even though Kashmir has been taken out of me and away from me. It is my heritage. The umbilical cord that binds me to the Valley is inseparable and un detachable. It is invisible and yet visible. For the deepest recesses in the dark corridors of my mind reverberate with images and events which shaped my childhood. I never lived in Kashmir, I only went there every summer and spent two of the best months of every year in the Valley. I grew up in Delhi, went to school in the rajdhani, but always had one foot planted in the Valley. Yet the feelings are strong, the emotion heavy when one recollects those pleasurable moments spent every summer. All that is in the past, I haven’t visited Kashmir for close to 30 years and yet I cannot get it out of my head and psyche. How can I? I grew up in a household obsessed with Kashmir. As a child I was drawn into this discourse. From my grandfather to my father and my uncle, this naked obsession was stark and ubiquitous. The stories were endless about the dramatis personae who shaped the accession – Panditji, Sardar Patel, Mountbatten, Karan Singh, Bakshi Ghulam Mohommed and Ghulam Mohommad Sadiq among others.

Last weekend, a bunch of students studying masscom at Kashmir University landed at my door. In the 22 to 23 age bracket, almost 30 of these reasonably smart and articulate kids visited our office and spent a couple of hours with me. Restive, but quiet at first, they slowly opened up on my verbalencouragement. I told them about their heritage, how Panditji and that true Nationalist Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah virtually plucked Kashmir from under Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s nose. I asked them whether they read a lot, I asked them whether they had paid any attention to their past, whether they had focused on their rich but controversial history. Some said yes, others hummed and hawed. Impromptu, I took them back in time in the Wellsian Time Machine. I asked them whether they knew that Jinnah had dropped anchor in the Valley for close to 40 days in the run up to accession with India. Jinnah in May 1944 tried hard to network with Kashmiri leaders, convincing them of the virtues of siding with what would eventually become Pakistan. During his lengthy stay in the Valley, he tried his utmost to seek a meeting with Sheikh Abdullah who studiously avoided him. Sheikh Saheb was the man who both sides wooed assiduously for he was the centrifuge that would deliver Kashmir toone or the other.

With Sheikh Saheb dodging the bullet, Jinnah was disconsolate and finally left Kashmir in a bit of a huff. I recounted this story for the benefit of those present in my room. Moreover, I reminded them of Gandhiji’s celebrated visit to the Valley the same year. Maharaja Hari Singh was recalcitrant, seeking independence from both the new entities – Pakistan and India. Lord Mountbatten and Lord Haslings Ismay (Mountbatten’s chief of staff) both tried to reason with the Maharaja, but to no avail. Finally it was left to Gandhiji to work his miracle. While it is reported that Gandhiji’s car was stoned in Baramulla, it is also well known that when Gandhiji arrived in Srinagar, people who were present recount the size of the procession and the cries of Mahatma Gandhi zindabad. Gandhiji obviously convinced Hari Singh who fell in line and paved the way for V P menon to bring back the instrument of accession on October 26, 1947. Even on the morning of October 26, 1947, Jinnah tried repeatedly and even desperately to speak to Sheikh Saheb by calling at Panditji’s residence 17 York Road, but an untrusting Sheikh Saheb eluded him.

Since that fateful day, Kashmir is a story that refuses to go away from the news pages. It is a story of life and equally death. Life of a Kashmiri in the free democracy of India and death of a dream of referendum which never took place though it was promised. It is also a tale of what could have been, but the first travesty took place when Sheikh was arrested in Gulmarg and then incarcerated. Let me not bore you with history. Let me tell you about my interface with the youth of the Valley. A collective which while replicating the Intifada from the middle east in the violent summer of 2010 had turned resistance into its most destructive face in recent memory. I discovered to my chargin that these youth revered the firebrand Gheelani because he stood for a particular cause. A cause which is unacceptable to India for obvious reasons. I have had a lengthy conversation with Gheelani Sahebmyself and I found his demand of ‘azadi’ completely facetious. But the youth gathered warmed up to the conversation once I broached his name. As I said at the outset, they were restive and the pain and anger became more evident when the Army and para military were mentioned. It was like a dam had burst, they couldn’t control their emotions.

From us – Muslim and Hindu – in the same room, there was a palpable change for the worse. It became us and them. They railed about the ‘excesses’, they railed about Omar Abdullah’s misrule, the railed about the lack of infrastructure and civic amenities. There was anger over mis governance and the bijli, sadak, pani inadequacies. They believe that Gheelani Saheb stands for something and at least he is steadfast about his ideology unlike the Hurriyatwallahs who keep changing tactics and don’t necessarily stand for anything anymore. It was like a two way classroom where while they tried to glean something from me, parallely they offered me a peep into their minds and psyche. The byplay was fascinating for they started asking questions. Questions about India’s (mind you India’s) intent,India’s approach towards removal of AFSPA which they reckon is draconian, the longish stint of peace and quiet in the Vale this year and the strong yearning for lasting peace and tranquility. There were other posers – why did the Pandits sell their houses, why don’t you revisit your madre vatan, when will the army pull out, will we get better governance et al? There was no meeting of minds.

I told them that the world has moved on, time will pass them by, the fruits of economic prosperity have to be absorbed by one and all and Kashmir is not an exception because it is an integral part of India. The youth want peace, they too want to move on with their lives, but only on their terms. Yes, Lt Gen Hasnain’s efforts at involving the youth has paid in spades in 2011, but the yawning chasm between action and deliverables is huge. This perceptual and real gap is what is hurting Delhi’s exact role in the Valley. The youth are fed up of the violence, they want too want to move on, but they want a set of covenants which are cast in stone. They believe in Gheelani Saheb’s standing as the tallest ideological leader and not necessarily in his ideology of ‘azadi’. This generation of youth wants improvement in the physical infrastructure of the Valley, they want jobs and education. The two teachers who accompanied the youth spoke of how 2011 was a great year for academics as there were no disruptions. Maybe that is way forward – kuch tum karo, kuch hum karein – only then will this divide be bridged.

I too yearn to kiss the turf. Madre Vatan beckons. I too want to show my family my homeland. Kashmiri Pandits were stampeded out of the Valley, it has left their psyches brutalized, their memories vandalized. They are equal partners in the progress, but no one will return, the fear pyschosis is over riding.