Five years after Article 370, Jammu sees tectonic shift in mood in as unemployment, corruption remain
Euphoria around the revocation Article 370 has subsided and the people of Jammu are raising bread and butter issues
From euphoric celebrations on August 5, 2019, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) central government revoked Article 370, Jammu has undergone a tectonic shift in the last five years.
The mood on the ground is not as upbeat as the effervescence observed five years ago would have suggested. It can be attributed to a multitude of factors like spiralling unemployment, scarce jobs, tax burdens even as facilities remain poor, no takers of a common man’s grievances and peaking corruption.
“Mood has shifted drastically. Five years ago, people of Jammu thought that something very good was going to happen but now reality has dawned upon them. People think their jobs and lands are being snatched from them. Now, they are talking like where we should go from here,” says Rajan Kour, a Sikh woman.
“People want livelihoods. Roti, Kapda, Makaan still remains a big concern for a common man. You can’t survive on emotive slogans for long,” she adds with a sense of resignation.
Rukhsana Kousar, a special police officer, who 14 years ago rose to prominence after she shot dead Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant Abu Osama and forced his aides to flee, felt that post abrogation of the Article 370, the backward and hilly areas haven’t received any major facilities.
“Unemployment is still a problem. People in backward areas still languish in poverty. Terrorism, which we thought would never rear its head again, has bounced back in almost all the 10 districts of Jammu,” she says.
In March 2023, unemployment rate for Jammu and Kashmir was 23.09% and while it came down to 18.3% by January 2024, it is still way higher than the national average. In June 2024, the unemployment rate in India was 9.2%.
‘Taken for granted’
Sumit Hakhu, 45, a Kashmiri Pandit, says the revocation of the Article 370 choked the oxygen supply to separatists and terrorists in the region and ensured full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with the Indian union, but Jammu was taken for granted in the past five years.
“The entire focus remains on Kashmir. Now, see the situation in Jammu...terrorists are almost in every district while Kashmir is almost peaceful. It appears there is no plan of action for Jammu,” he adds.
Sreshat Sharma, a 52-year-old banker, says the common man in Jammu has been brought on a par with people of metro cities in terms of taxes but few compare the per-capita income of metro cities with that of Jammu.
He adds that the governance has shifted online, introducing smart electricity metres and property tax etc, digitising revenue records, but the facilities remain poor: “We also could not see major private players in Jammu where the unemployed youth would have been absorbed. In fact, Jammu in the past five years has become a hub of drug addicts.”
Mohammad Arshid, 43, of Doda feels that the prime concern are jobs and their lands. “We must have exclusive rights to jobs and lands,” he points out.
Sardar Balvinder Singh, meanwhile, flag mining and liquor mafias flourishing in Jammu in the past five years and rising corruption.
“Today, BJP is promising to regularise over 60,000 daily wagers. Where were they for the past 10 years? Contractual lecturers here, who get appointed for nine to ten months, get a paltry wage of ₹28,000 in a striking contrast to ₹57,000 a month in Ladakh. These are the benefits of revocation of Article 370 we are reaping here,” he said.
However, for a youth leader Garu Bhatti from the Valmiki community, the revocation of Article 370 and the subsequent five years have brought positive changes in the lives of his community.
“The past five years have brought big change for us. Our children are now going to schools and those who had quit their studies, have taken it up again. Around 20 girls of the community are pursuing law studies. A youth was appointed as junior engineer in the Jammu Municipal Corporation this year,” Bhatti, who attributed the positive developments to the revocation of 370 and subsequent introduction of domicile certificate, says.
“We have been given voting rights as well as SC category. At the same time ill-effects of the discrimination meted out to Jammu in the past 70 years will take some time to go away. There is no magic wand. It takes time for the wounds to heal. We should not give up hope,” he adds.
Pritam Lal, a 65-year old West-Pak refugee (WPR), was also all praise for the BJP-led central government for bringing drastic changes in the socio-economic condition of the WPRs.
“The BJP ended discrimination meted out to us for the past 70 years. PM Modi ensured us fundamental rights. He gave us voting rights for the assembly elections. The other day, he announced ownership rights of lands in Jammu where we have been settled since 1947 following partition,” Lal says.