Jammu and Kashmir remain the top stories in India today. Both regions have been burning for over a fortnight now.
And there is no solution in sight.
In the meantime, Pakistan has turned "democratic" and Musharraf has resigned.
Back home, a lead editorial in the ToI laments the fact that Manmohan is a poor political communicator.
Actually, there is nothing more important in politics than the verbal communication of ideas.
I am left with the feeling that the crisis in Jammu & Kashmir reflects a larger crisis in India politics – that The State is but a network of client groups, completely out of touch with The People.
There is Leviathan on one side; there is The People on the other.
And the two do not meet.
And how suddenly the tide has turned from those glory days of "nine per cent growth." Now it is 13 per cent inflation.
I have no words of either wisdom or comfort to offer my reader today.
In the end, all I can say is that theories matter.
Action guided by wrong theories will always lead to disaster.
What is happening today is rooted in the intellectual ideas upon which this socialist State is based. The very fact that the Congress is sticking close to the Gandhi family shows that this party's intellectual stand remains the same. And this is the silent agreement among all parties: they do not oppose Congress socialism in their politics. That is what Amartya Sen's Hiren Mukherji Memorial Lecture in the central hall of parliament represents and attempts to bolster.
This is the crux of the problem.
There is an intellectual consensus that The State represents.
And that is the real issue before Indian politics today.
Agree with you, I too think state ownership of land lies behind the present Kashmir explosion. In fact, those who are protesting aganist the land transfer, might have been happy to sell land to Amarnath Board had they privately owned it
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