Elections to the six Lok Sabha seats of India-held Jammu and Kashmir were held on five different dates during the past month. The turnout figures are reported to be high by J&K standards. It was 35.2 per cent in 2004 and 39.7 per cent in the previous LS elections of 2009.

The voters in the disputed state have been using elections as an opportunity to express their rejection of Kashmir’s inclusion in the Indian union.

Various organisations have been successfully calling electors to boycott polls in an attempt to sustain its status of a disputed territory. Thus the turnout has become a one-sided “shadow plebiscite” as a higher turnout is projected by the Indian state as an evidence that the people of J&K had accepted they are part of India now.

Some analysts do believe that the present gradual rise in turnout, following a nosedive touching the bottom in the high militancy times of the late 1980s, is making the Indian position stronger than ever. They hurriedly link it with the recent efforts by Delhi to integrate Kashmiris as bearing fruit.

The turnout in J&K is, however, deceptive and the integration programmes are far from successful. “A detailed look can reveal that the turnout was high only in the Buddhist and Hindu majority belts of Ladakh and Jammu, but not in the Muslim majority valley,” says Riyazwani, who works for Daily Greater Kashmir and Tehelka, in a phone interview with Dawn from Srinagar.

In the elections to the 87-member held state assembly in 2008, the turnout was unexpectedly high even in the Valley.

The commission records put the figure at 61.2 per cent. “The National Conference’s (the current ruling party) strategy of delinking elections from the larger Kashmir problem and making it purely a ‘bijli, sarak, pani’ (electricity, roads and water) issue had worked,” says a Kashmiri journalist working in Delhi, Sameer Arshad, who believes that anti-incumbency factor was partly responsible for the low turnout this time. The state assembly will complete its six-year tenure later this year.

“There is no doubt that the people are tired of this government and have little choice otherwise, but boycott calls trump incumbency,” believes Riyazwani. He acknowledges that the popularity of militants who refuse to participate in elections cannot be taken for granted. “We don’t know about that as there is no objective way available to assess that and there is no doubt that they are divided in factions. But we must distinguish between the separatists and the separatism. While the former may not enjoy

mass support, separatism is the prevalent mindset in Kashmir.”

Indian government initiated many programs to integrate Kashmiris with the rest of India and defuse the separatism after the 2010 mass protests in Valley. The wave was triggered by the a fake encounter that killed three ‘Pakistani intruders’ that were later found to be innocent local youth. The security forces killed over one hundred stone pelting Kashmiris protesting the killing and demanding demilitarisation of the Valley in the following weeks.

Prime Minister’s scheme, Himayat and Uraan worth hundreds of crores of rupees offer scholarship to Kashmiri students, from under-graduates to post graduates, who agree to study outside of their state. “Pilferage and rampant corruption have taken the steam out of these. Uraan has not probably taken off its maiden flight even,” says Iftikhar Gilani, a Kashmiri journalist working in Delhi.

The National Conference that has ruled over J&K for much of the period since 1947 is allied with Congress at the Center and in the state. The Congress party’s 10-year rule that will end later this month will be remembered for the cases of massive corruption being reported every now and then.

Kashmiri students face many problems when they leave their state availing scholarships.

The top most is the ‘housing apartheid’ that anyway plagues all of India as house owners and housing societies refuse to let in people who eat different food with meat eating ‘non-veg’ being treated as pariahs. Kashmiris who are stereotyped as ‘anti-India terrorists’ face greater discrimination. The recent case of Kashmiri students celebrating a Pakistan victory over India in cricket is quoted everywhere as an expose of these social fault lines.

Even the non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims living do not associate and empathise with Kashmiris as it might mean additional trouble for them. “While the killing of around 1,000 Gujarati Muslims has jolted the community all over the country making communalism as the biggest issue in successive elections, there is hardly any Muslim outside Kashmir talking about tens of thousands of killings of Kashmiris,” says an observer who wished not to be named.

A Kashmiri student of final year in a Delhi law institute however sees the schemes partly working. “Your fellows do come with the mindset formed mainly by media propaganda but I have seen many change their views after interacting with us and listening to the other side of the story,” says the young man who preferred not to be named.

He was more concerned with the euphoria created around these schemes. “They are project as a panacea to our economic woes. The options in the Valley are really limited and people have to take the bait whatever the cost,” says the student adding, “the worry however is the future. You have education or the skill but will you find a job. That can make all these just another case of betrayal.”

Journalist Iftikhar Gilani sees the Kashmiri isolation in broader historical perspective and believes that Kashmiris have been cut off from their traditional social and economic linkages with Central Asia, China and then Pakistan by the political events over the last century and they have failed to develop any new relations because of the conflict. “They are completely secluded. The Valley is a prison and the prisoners have a particular psyche,” says Gilani.

In some districts during the present elections number of stationed troops is reported to be higher than the number of voters. Incidents of human rights violations have never seized since the insurgency began in late 1980s. There is a whole new generation that is born and brought up during this armed conflict.

“There are around hundred thousand families who have directly experienced state violence including torture and killings. This has accumulated a huge amount of grief in society as a whole. It can’t act normally,” says an observer who has worked in Kashmir for years.

“You can’t give scholarship to one brother and pick up the other in the dead of night as a suspected terrorist and then expect elections to change the discourse.”

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2014