Jammu, December 9
Jammu and Kashmir is no ordinary state to be governed even in the best of the times. And during the worst of the times it certainly tests your mettle in every possible manner. For Chief Minister of the state Ghulam Nabi Azad, it has been a challenge worth taking. “At least I have been able to reduce the fear among people to a great extent”, he said in an exclusive interview with The Tribune here today.
Azad said his job did not end at “reducing the fear”. In fact, it had just begun. Right from day one, when he took over as the Chief Minister of the state, he embarked upon the two-pronged strategy of “peace and development”, which, he said, had to go together. “Anything less than that will work to nothing”, he remarked, adding that peace and development were complimentary to each other.
Listing his priorities, Azad said: “I want to put the state on to the path of development and at the same time rid it of emotive sloganeering”. He observed that in the past there had been too much sloganeering and no practical work on the ground level. “Everything revolved around one particular agenda and in the process nobody bothered about development”, he claimed.
Now,he said, people had started coming out. There were practically no more demands and demonstrations for “azadi”. But, there were certainly great demands for rehabilitation, development, employment,
education, health care and everything that benefited the masses.
After assuming the charge, Azad initiated some novel measures to speed up the development process. He introduced the idea of round-the-clock development work. Otherwise, development work in most parts of the state would get stalled for about six months of harsh winter. Now, everything was planned and executed in a time-bound manner.
Asked as to how did he think of resolving the Kashmir problem, Azad reiterated that it needed both “political and developmental approach, besides a change in the attitude of the people involved”. Political approach, he said, meant involving all sorts of people related with the issue. He said it was during his tenure that the Prime Minister held four round-table conferences, giving representatives of various organisations an opportunity to express their viewpoints. Besides, around 2,500 big and small political rallies had been organised in the Kashmir valley by the mainstream political parties, including the Congress, the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party this year.
For a place like Kashmir, where people feared for their lives in associating themselves with any of these parties, it was certainly a phenomenal improvement at the ground level. On the development side, Azad claimed that all pending development projects were not only revived, but also quite a number of them were completed in a time-bound manner. “An impression had been created that there was no accountability for anything and everything was condoned in the name of militancy”, he said, adding, “the first thing I did was to dispel this notion and hold people accountable and responsible for all their omissions and commissions”. He claimed that there had been a significant progress in terms of transparency in the functioning of the government and the level of corruption had come down substantially. Besides, the government started the process of confiscating the properties of the corrupt.
Two years is certainly not a long time to pronounce the judgment about the success or failure of a Chief Minister and that too when he has held the office during the turbulent times. But, Azad seems to have made a good beginning. However, as he admits, he has still a long way to go.
