Rajesh Ramachandran
As the snow melts in the Himalayas, the summer brings in hope of a new beginning in Jammu and Kashmir. The Prime Minister’s all-party meeting on June 24, attended by the important political stakeholders of the troubled Union Territory, has renewed expectations of the revival of the democratic process. And as it always happens in the Valley, this has triggered theories explaining the Centre’s motives, ranging from a nudge from US President Joe Biden to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. The mistake we often commit is to place J&K in the vortex of the subcontinent’s geopolitics and act and think in terms of the Valley as some sort of prize for subcontinental power games. More than the mainland, the Valley’s mind-readers have mastered this game of second-guessing every political or administrative gesture as a sinister move on the…
