Amid odds, the subaltern speaks

Amitabh Mattoo

IF you were to visit the Boulevard on the banks of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, any evening these days, you are certain to be chuffed. On the lake are rows of inviting houseboats, illuminated by fairy lighting, and dedicated shikaras that ferry visitors across; besides the street are a range of shops that display handicrafts of every hue. Nested in this tourist circus is La Delice, a boulangerie and patisserie run by a Kashmiri chef, Saqib, trained in the best culinary schools of Paris. With his Parisian wife, and two young children, he has returned home. Saqib’s chutzpah is remarkably contagious, and it is young people like him who are giving Kashmir and Kashmiris hope, even in these dismal times.

For in an age of extremes, the recent escalation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has the power of drowning all strains of moderation. The shocking killing of a prominent newspaper editor, the end of the Ramzan ceasefire by the security forces, the anger of many radicalised young men and women on the streets, points to the re-emergence of an all too familiar polarised Manichean discourse. And yet beyond this deja vu are the voices on the social margins, on the political periphery — the subalterns who are crafting an alternative discourse, almost a parallel universe that must be allowed to speak (with due deference to Gayatri Spivak), be empowered and become the shapers of a new future for Jammu and Kashmir. 

In Leh, the mild mannered innovator Sonam Wangchuk, winner of the Rolex Innovation Award, shrugs off any similarities between him and Phunsukh Wangdoo, the protagonist of the movie, Three Idiots, inspired by him. This remarkable innovator has moved beyond the ice stupas (which once made him famous) that address water scarcity in the region by allowing excess water in winter to be converted into ice and then back to water in the dry months. Wangchuk and his team have now drawn elaborate plans to set up an alternative university in the state that will seek to help educate a new generation of students in the importance of energy-efficient, environmentally sound, small-scale, locally autonomous and decentralised out-of-the-box solutions to problems that seem too big to handle.

Consider this: on JK Rowling’s twitter handle you discover a tweet to a Class VII student of Haji Public School promising her ‘something’. Haji Public School is in Breswana in Doda district, three hours from the nearest motorable road. You need to walk or ride horseback from Prem Nagar to the school in the mountain hamlet, at the ancestral home of its founding members, the Haji family. The school started with two classes, lower and upper kindergarten, two teachers and 35 students studying in rooms of the Haji family cottage. It now has over 450 students on its rolls, a permanent local staff of more than 20 teachers, and a ‘running roster of dozens of Indian and international teaching volunteers’. The inspiration behind the school is Sabbah Haji, educated in Dubai and Bangalore, and who was able to coalesce a remarkable group of stakeholders (especially volunteers) through her twitter handle: imsabbah, Chenab ki Churail (the witch from Chenab), with close to 30K engaged followers. Every child of the school — many walk miles to come to school — without exception is full of joy de vivre and fond of reading. The Internet and computers cohabit in perfect harmony with JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling.

And then you have Khurram Mir. Pony-tailed marathon runner, Mir comes from a family of apple growers but initially pursued a Masters in Science in industrial engineering and operations research in Purdue University. What he set out to do in the horticulture sector, particularly in apples, has been to intervene in every sector of the entire value chain, and today he divides his time between the US and Kashmir.

Mir is today more than a Kashmiri success story; he is a global icon: a  Harvard Business School case study for his enterprise in organising cooperative orchards that grow high density, fast-growing apples (root stock imported from South Tyroll) which are then stored in the largest controlled atmosphere facility in the Valley, in Lassipura, South Kashmir. His resilience is remarkable even after his orchard in Bamdoora in Anantnag was razed to the ground by militants. This has not prevented him from consolidating and expanding even further.

In Jammu, with relatively greater political stability, the stories of  excellence are easier to find. One such example is of the Sarveshwar Group and its current leader Rohit Gupta. Founded in 1890 by Mulamalji, and given new direction in 1950 by Suraj Prakash Gupta, today, the company has moved much beyond being a family-owned business supplying rice primarily to the royal family and the Indian Army. Today, the company is — after J&K Bank — the only one from the state listed on the National Stock Exchange, trading at between 64.70 and 66.00 with a market capitalisation  of about Rs 165 crore. It has expanded its portfolio to include state-of-the-art organic products. Retailing in Jammu and Srinagar, and exported across global frontiers, the group grows or sources directly from farmers saffron from Pampore, walnuts from Pulwama, green tea and quinoa from Himachal and basmati from Ranbir Singh Pura and Mushq Buddhij (the finest variety of Kashmiri rice) from South Kashmir. Rohit Gupta has recently launched the Nimbark brand of spices and organic produce that sell in Coscos, Sainsbury’s and Woolworths, besides several other global outlets.

These are stories that the media rarely captures, but can be the catalysts for change. As Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti recently said, and she spoke for every resident of the state: ‘We can be the trailblazers, leaders for change in a troubled world that is looking for solutions beyond existing paradigms.  We see ourselves no longer as a problem, but as those who have learnt to confront the real problems that impact all of us. Our organic experience may well provide lessons beyond the manufactured consensus that often informs decisions in the corridors of global economic and political power.’ The challenge now, for all of us, is to translate this vision into reality.

The writer is Chair, State Knowledge Initiative Platform, J&K, and adviser to CM