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| INTRODUCTION |
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Kashmir’s
insurgency is 20 years old this month.
Twenty years apart, the
streets of Srinagar witnessed identical images:
thousands of furious youth, anti-India slogans,
stones, bullets ands blood. To many, nothing
has changed in the valley of rebellion.
But beneath the
veneer of the Valley’s constant angst,
there is change and churning, so sweeping that
it seems unrecognizable from even a few years
ago. Beginning today, the Hindustan Times captures
that change in a series of stories.
We also invite your
comments on the past 20 years, and the next
20 -- what is it that you think should be done
in Kashmir, not just to resolve the dispute
but even smaller, more doable measures?
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| TOP
STORIES |
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Waiting
for governments to begin their job
Arun
Joshi, Srinagar, |
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Every other day this summer, hundreds of men
marched down Residency Road in the heart of
Kashmir’s capital, their fists clenched,
raising angry slogans.
That sight is a cliché
in Kashmir, where angst has run deep. But the
men were not part of a separatist rally –
they were temporary teachers, demanding their
jobs be made permanent.
Twenty years after the
insurgency began in Kashmir, uncomfortable questions
of governance are being raised by citizens –
and many are asking where much of the central
government aid disappeared and why authorities
did not do their job over the past years in
many areas despite reducing levels of violence.
Work is on in many sectors, but nearly every
development-related work seems to suffer from
the same disease: a task begun rarely gets completed.
Some 16 kilometres from
Srinagar in Dangerpora village, the 215 students
at the government-run Boys Middle School –
which also teaches girls, incidentally –
are victims of that disease every day. The school,
from kindergarten to Class VIII, has nine classes,
but only four classrooms -- and no wall. |
So
classes are conducted in the open where
students sit gulping the plumes of dust
constantly thrown into their faces by
the busy traffic, with their studies interrupted
by the blaring of horns and the noise
of heavy traffic from the highway. And
when it rains, those who do not have classrooms
simply go home.
The
school could have taken twice the number
of students it has, but it keeps refusing
all applicants because it has no place.
Riffat, who studies in the fifth standard,
is excited when Hindustan Times journalists
reach the school. She assumes it is government
officials who have come to ease the school’s
problems. She struggles to get up from
her mat to greet the visitors –
she is unwell. She is pale and has been
running a fever for two days. |
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