Shams Irfan
A journalist with seven years of working experience in Kashmir.
I feel like I am you
Shaziya Yousuf
I saw you there in that picture. You were being carried home. There were two bodies wrapped in
I saw you there in that picture. You were being carried home. There were two bodies wrapped in
Taking on the Left, the Right, and Centre
Tarique A Bhat
We are feeling a morbid lack of interest in life and sort of empty inside? Completely lacking in motivation. Reason: We are obsessed with politics and tend to look at the government and politicians as the cause of all problems in our lives.
Yes, we are fed up with politics of more than 75 years now. I am talking of many who don’t neatly fit into the red or green. Kashmir is mired in a whirlpool of uncertainty. Our politicians are without the requisite political will to overcome deliberately designed structural impediments to solving the problem.
We are feeling a morbid lack of interest in life and sort of empty inside? Completely lacking in motivation. Reason: We are obsessed with politics and tend to look at the government and politicians as the cause of all problems in our lives.
Yes, we are fed up with politics of more than 75 years now. I am talking of many who don’t neatly fit into the red or green. Kashmir is mired in a whirlpool of uncertainty. Our politicians are without the requisite political will to overcome deliberately designed structural impediments to solving the problem.
Gagging Cable TV
Local cable channels are patronised when the news content propagates what government wants people to hear. Gags come in when they present a situation that corners the government. Majid Maqbool reports.
Local cable channels have again come under government scanner for telecasting ‘objectionable’ news and current affairs programmes. The government has now ordered the cable operators to limit the news and current affairs programmes to 15 minutes everyday.
Last year, in the wake of Amarnath land row, the government had put similar restrictions on the telecast of news and current affairs programmes and passed orders to close down all the local cable channels.
Centre to look into AFSPA: Chidambaram
The recent statements of Home Minister P Chidambaram regarding the revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and maintenance of law and order by the state government have little to reveal for the people of the state. The scheduled two-day visit of Chidambaram to Kashmir yielded two lines for media consumption but if these are dug a little, there is nothing new.
AFSPA is a centre subject and it cannot come into force directly in the state unless state government notifies some area as disturbed and clamps Disturbed Area Act over the same. Then only AFSPA can be enforced in the same area. And for its revocation, a simple ordinance is needed to de-notify any area as disturbed area which automatically will shave off the unlimited powers of armed forces in that area.
AFSPA is a centre subject and it cannot come into force directly in the state unless state government notifies some area as disturbed and clamps Disturbed Area Act over the same. Then only AFSPA can be enforced in the same area. And for its revocation, a simple ordinance is needed to de-notify any area as disturbed area which automatically will shave off the unlimited powers of armed forces in that area.
Building up a catastrophe
Arshid Malik Last year, a friend of mine asked me to visit a piece of land he had purchased in Srinagar city. We settled...
Asiya Andrabi
Asiya Andrabi became the first woman to address a gathering at the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar. The firebrand leader addressed the gathering on Sunday,
Battle of ideas
Undeclared curfews, barricaded roads and preventive detentions are again becoming a routine in Kashmir. In the aftermath of the Shopian crisis,
Demilitarise now
Sheikh Showkat Hussain
Rape and killing of two women in Shopian evoked widespread condemnation throughout the valley of Kashmir. Everyone blames Indian security agencies for this crime and demands probe by international agencies. Establishment of an enquiry commission by state was out rightly rejected on account of previous record of such enquiries being used as a device to cool down outraged sentiments and pave way for shielding of culprits.
While Kashmir was burning for eight continuous days, Indian media and civil society remained a silent spectator. This indifference and silence by media and civil society depicted that it is not only government and security agencies which tend to treat Kashmir as aliens but also its civil society and so called human rights activists have the same attitude towards Kashmir. One should not get surprised over the response of Kashmirs to such an incident. The Incident is part of a pattern that is being pursued for past several years in order to humiliate Kashmir society.
Mission green
Declined a government job, Shashi Kumar Kesri was sarcastically told to go farming. He did and turned a vast barren rocky land into a...
Newsmakers
VISITED: Former Chief Ministers, Dr Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who are cabinet ministers in federal government at Delhi visited Jammu. Both were...
Crime and sentiment
Zamir AhmadLife seems to have come full circle for the denizens of this God forsaken land. The events of the last week fall into...
CRISIS MISHANDLED
For the last one week, Kashmir is literally on fire. A young mother and a teenager were found dead in isolated peripheries of Shopian
Iftikhar Hussain Ansari
Iftikhar Hussain Ansari’s new found political over-enthusiasm was visible just about everywhere in the valley past week– from Srinagar where he, along with other Peoples Democratic Party legislators, was protesting against the government over the Shopian
“Profitability High on Lending Operations in Jammu and Kashmir”
State’s only listed company, the J&K Bank declared a profit of Rs 409.84 crores for 2008-09. This is the highest ever profit that the...
Cost of protest
Strikes have been the most common feature of separatist struggle since 1989. Hamidullah Dar reports the price that people and institutions pay for paralyzing...
