GST is dead and buried in J&K

Arun Joshi

The people in the rest of India often wonder: why is Kashmir simmering and who is responsible for all the mess here? The simplest answer: it is the Kashmiri politician who is at the root of this problem.

Any evidence needed? Just look at the way politicians conspired to kill the GST regime, making it an issue as the country’s onslaught on Kashmir’s autonomy. The internal politics of Kashmir-centric parties in their unhealthy competition to sound louder as champions of Kashmir lands the issue in the lap of separatists.

Read more: Will J&K be part of India, Sena asks BJP

The people are made to doubt the intentions (of the Centre) and ground is created to stall reforms. Emotions are stirred and connected to the conflict and the narrative of violence is put in top gear.

The same methodology was adopted in writing an obituary of the GST regime even before the formal declaration of its death. The sine die adjournment of the Assembly on Saturday formally declared GST as dead.

After its death, GST will be used as it has been done before, too, to perpetuate the conflict — more death and destruction will follow for which the Centre will be blamed.

The economics has always been subjugated to politics in Kashmir, where the little working season because of weather conditions has been further reduced, practically eliminated, to almost nil. It is the fondness to “teach India a lesson” by bleeding the self.

Economic prospects are killed to keep the cycle of conflict going on, because if economic reforms get under way, the politics of opportunism and secessionism will be rendered irrelevant.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is a gentleman who trusts people at their face value. He is unaware of the length to which Machiavellianism is practised here. No one can ever tell who will turn a saboteur in the garb of being a champion of reforms.

For all these months ahead of the special session of the Assembly called for passing the GST Bill, Haseeb Drabu, as was his duty as the state’s Finance Minister, took over the command to communicate with the Centre. Jaitley was assured that the GST Bill, with some modifications, would be passed in the legislature without any hassle.

Simultaneously, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was kept happy with the word “sanctity” of Article 370 (that grants special status to the state) remaining untouched. This attempt at symphonising strings of two opposite instruments sounded music to the ears of Delhi and Mehbooba.

But something being amiss in the order of communication became clear when all parties met to discuss GST and Drabu could not convince anyone. The subsequent adjournment of the special session confirmed that intentions were unclear from the very beginning.

The kind of consensus that the state is looking for will never come. This is a fallacy, plain and simple. This consensus should have been searched before rather than after convening and then adjourning the special session of the legislature for GST.

The GST regime was to bring Rs 1,500-2,000-crore economic benefits to the state. But now, things have been worked in such a twisted manner that it will further fuel the conflict and inflict more losses on the state economy.

The debate on primarily an economic matter has been polarised between Indian nationalism and Kashmiri secessionism. That’s suicidal for the state overburdened by the baggage of conflict it is carrying on from the previous century.

It is time to pause and look forward to a new future of promise and progress. Perpetuating conflict should not be the curriculum for new generations. They deserve a better syllabus.