Will Mehbooba Mufti as J&K Chief Minister change Kashmir?

Sagarika Ghose-senior journalist and a well known former TV news anchor- in her Times of India Op-Ed dated 09-01-2016 and titled, “Sympathy wave for Mehbooba Mufti in Kashmir, the state hopes the daughter can fill her father’s big shoes” is either being irrationally exuberant or  is projecting her hopes onto the candidature of Chief Minister ship of Mehbooba Mufti.  Ghose articulates and projects her hope and then supports this with a quote: “On the streets of Srinagar, they are rooting for Mehbooba and there are hopes she will be a high achiever. Sympathy runs high for Mufti’s daughter. “We hope she will be able to achieve something as India’s first Muslim woman chief minister,” says Ali Mian, who runs a local tea shop, serving girda and noon chai”.

Insofar as a local perspective about Mehbooba being Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, it could be stated fairly precisely that the people of Kashmir appear to be disinterested about who becomes the chief minister of the state. Bluntly put, the people could not care less about who occupies the highest office of the state. This accrues from multifarious reasons; the predominant of these is the people disconnect from politics or apathy. Apathy, in turn, stems from what sociologists call a ‘stalemate society’-that is,  a political system where the likelihood of significant change resulting through elections and bargaining has been reduced to a minimum. This is one perspective on apathy. The other is apathy as a state or condition of consciousness brilliantly adumbrated by C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse.

Mills and Marcuse’s has been lucidly put into perspective by Thomas de Luca- a professor at FordHam University. Thomas De Luca’s incisive dissection of Mills and Marcuse’s perspective on apathy lends itself  three potential aspects of political apathy as a condition. The first two Luca puts under the rubric alienation: he uses this term in the specific sense of conditions of political life that are objective within the terms of the theory. Objective alienation takes its most severe form in what Luca calls absolute political alienation, which, according to Luca finds its most complete expression in Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. Paraphrasing Mills and Marcuse, Luca posits that Absolute political alienation exists when people have been so thoroughly manipulated and programmed that they lose the capacity for free intentional action, including the ability to think and act in ways that at some point may be politically relevant. From Mills’s work, however, Luca draws a theory of political subordination-that is,  the scope of the political realm is so narrowly drawn, and the terms of discourse that find life within it so confusing and inappropriate, that it may be fairly said that politics is thoroughly subordinated to a matrix of depoliticizing institutions, ideas, and practices. (Luca T:1995)

The problem of disconnect between people and politics in Kashmir then stems from apathy which, in turn stems from a circumscribed political plane and a rather paradoxical depoliticization of the public sphere and public institutions. Can, the question is, Mehbooba’s arrival on the scene give short shrift to this apathy?

Unlikely is the answer. Apathy in Kashmir is too wide and deeply entrenched; it is both systemic and psychosocial and political to lend itself to change by an individual.  However, there is one arena or domain where Mehbooba can potentially leave a mark. This is the domain of Governance. However, the problematique of Governance in a conflict ridden society poses insuperable problems.  While there is no consensus on the exact definition of governance, it can be stated governance is about the exercise of power in the management of a state. Governance in a conflict ridden milieu is not straightforward; it is both involuted and convoluted. In these milieus, power is apparent as well as obscured. The range of actors with different and differing agendas is vast and institutional imbalances exist. In the context of Kashmir,  overlaying these factors is the element of patronage which has overtime become the link between the political class, government and the people. Or, in other words, government has become a vast patronage machine and governance is largely about the disbursal of patronage.  

The condition that obtains in Kashmir then is synthesis of   neopatrimonialistic clientist politico-governance structures and systems sitting atop depoliticization induced apathetic populace which operates in a circumscribed political plane. This condition has become structural over time and will naturally be unwieldy to change. If it all, this condition is to be changed or altered, it will take great determination, will, and continuous and consistent efforts to first dismantling the extant system and then rebuild or create a new one. Joseph Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction’ springs to mind here. The major problem with dismantling the existing system and rebuilding is that it carries a great risk. Institutionally, governments are risk averse-more so in conflict ridden environments. Risk aversion plus the conflict in and over Kashmir then excludes any major changes to both government and governance in Kashmir. The status quo with alteration of office between mainstream political parties will then be the preferred default condition in Kashmir. Cumulatively, all this means that there will be no major changes when Mehbooba Mufti becomes Chief Minister. The odds are stacked against her. 

What will be the implications and consequences on Kashmir, its politics, political economy and economics?

Nothing except for a change in guard at the top, the feel good factor among feminists over the highest office in the state being run by a woman and meaty stuff for the chattering classes. This, however, is the benign bit. If the drift and momentum of events and the morass Kashmir has gotten into continues, the outcome for Kashmir and its peoples will be more uncertainty and more intense apathy- a condition that no individual-Mehbooba or Omar- or institution can remedy unless and until the fundamental problems that have begotten the conflict in and over Kashmir are resolved for good. No amount of spin can obscure this fundamental reality.

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