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Warming up for keen battle

By Sidharth Mishra

A few weeks back, your reporter in this very column had mentioned about the possible role which the Congress could play in the upcoming polls in Uttar Pradesh. The conclusion was that even in the case of the near-dead Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee coming back to life, the possibility of it forming a government was remote. However, alive and kicking Congress in UP certainly has the potential to damage chances of the BJP, which is making an attempt to regain its foothold in Lucknow.
The saffron party’s rule in the state ended in 2002. Thereafter, its political fortunes in the nation’s politically most significant state has been on a downswing - barring 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Under the stewardship of Narendra Modi and with his closest ally Amit Shah playing the navigator, the party managed to win 73 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014. However, managing a rerun of 2014 blitzkrieg in the winter-spring of 2017, when the state goes to polls to elect representatives to the Assembly, has just become a wee bit more difficult with the Congress entering the fray with some gusto.
The pollsters, who have already started entertaining people with their predictions, are indicating a hung Assembly.
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Kashmiriyat under siege

By Sidharth Mishra

In the summer of 1999, I visited Poonch-Rajouri sector of Jammu and Kashmir. There is a place called Thana Mandi midway between Poonch and Rajouri. I do not recall which district that was but remember the place for its scenic beauty, and often making headlines for subversive activities by the ultras coming over from Pakistan. It’s pretty close to the Line of Control.
This was the time when the Kargil war had just ended and infiltration by Pakistan-backed militants had shifted southward. The assignment from the newspaper was to cover both the firing from beyond the Line of Control and from within. We had to cover both the forward infantry battalions and the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) units combing the hinterland, and also interact with the civilian population. In the course of this visit, I was taken to this beautiful shrine Shahdra Sharief about four kilometres out of Thana Mandi town.
The Shahzada Nashin (the high priest) of the Sufi shrine received us well and gave us very sweet tea to drink. When I mentioned to him that it was impossible to finish that huge cup, he smiled and said, “Kashmir mein chai, namkeen roti ke saath peete hain” (In Kashmir one drinks tea with salted bread). Next, I dipped the bread in steaming tea and the bite was more than invigorating.
There at the shrine I met two Muslim brothers, both jawans with Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI), who had come to the mazar for thanksgiving having come back alive from the just concluded war. To me this was quite a learning experience, the two brothers sounded so different from the Srinagar-bred Kashmiri folks we keep bumping into.
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Message of Tricolour in Tral

By Sidharth Mishra

The developments in the past month have made it abundantly clear that the Centre this time around has made up its mind to get the violence mongers in Jammu and Kashmir, as the cliché goes, by their neck. On the morning of Independence Day, WhatsApp groups were fed with a video clip which showed the Tricolour being unfurled from a telecom tower in Tral, the hometown of neutralised terrorist Burhan Wani.
As the flag proudly fluttered, it was captured on the camera and later released on social media with AR Rahman’s “Vande Mataram” playing in the background. The clear message being that the Government is going to follow a policy of domination in the Valley. If any doubts remained, it soon got dispelled when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke from the ramparts of Red Fort. In asking the Kashmiri youth to drop the stone and hold the laptop for a prosperous future, Modi made clear that he is in no haste for an early “political solution” to violence in the Valley.
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Parliament needs to keep distance

By Sidharth Mishra

A very fruitful Monsoon session of Parliament has come to a close. The record books this session is marked by the passage of the momentous Good and Service Tax (GST) Bill. There were several academically sound and politically significant addresses made during the debate. There were certain other good discussions especially the one on Jammu and Kashmir and on the atrocities on Dalits. It gave ample opportunity to the leaders on the both sides of the well to showcase their oratorical skills.
But there are two images of the session that have made a lasting impression on me and are not necessarily positive. The first image is that of the exhibition put up by the Ministry of Defence inside the premises of Parliament, and second BJP lawmaker Anurag Thakur moving around in the olive green uniform in hallowed corridors of the temple of democracy, soon after his commissioning as an officer in the Territorial Army.
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Blaming it on Bawarias

By Sidharth Mishra

On the very day the Uttar Pradesh Police claimed that it had solved the case of the gang rape of a Noida woman and her minor daughter on National Highway 91, those who have followed crime scene in and around the national Capital raised their eye brows. The crime is alleged to have been committed by members belonging to the denotified tribe of the Bawarias. The former “criminal tribes”, though known for committing most heinous crimes including murder have never been named in any case of rape or sexual assault.
Upon carefully scanning the reports published in newspapers in Uttar Pradesh in the past week, it can be discerned that the police are working overtime to thrust it on the denotified tribes to escape indictment for their inability to prevent the most grotesque criminal incident in recent times. The first question which arose in your reporter’s mind, too, was that when there was a movement of this tribe in the area, why were enough precautions not taken?
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Revenge of the rivers

By Sidharth Mishra

About six years ago, an enthusiastic green activist from Ghaziabad, Vikrant Sharma had taken me to the banks of Hindon river near Mohun Nagar. He showed me how the government was changing the natural course of the river to reclaim some precious land to be allocated to builders for the development of residential areas. To a question on what was his objection to channelising a stream reduced to a “nullah” (drain), the passionate green warrior had replied that the worth of the “nullah” is known each time there is a heavy downpour.
He pointed to deluge in Mumbai in 2005 and said that it happened because the builders, politicians, and bureaucrats devoured Mithi river. On July 26 every year, people recall the mayhem caused by the floods which brought the metropolis to the standstill. Large numbers of people were stranded on the road, as they returned home from work that evening. Water logging on railroads halted Mumbai’s lifeline as local trains stopped operating. This caused a heavy rush on the roads, leading to vehicular logjam. Worse, the mobile services too collapsed.
A study carried out later showed that due to heavy downpour, Powai Lake had started overflowing and discharging water into the Mithi River. In normal course, the water should have got drained because of the prevalent low-tide. But that did not happen because the accumulated water from the first flood wave had yet not flushed out effectively during the ebb period because of a choked drainage system caused by the encroachment into the river. 
When I read reports of Gurujam, the miserable traffic jam in Gurgaon following heavy downpour July 28 last, I somehow remembered the prophetic words of Vikrant, “the worth of the nullah is known each time there is a heavy downpour.”
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Cong lets loose Sea Wolves in UP

By Sidharth Mishra

Congress last weekend launched its campaign for the upcoming Assembly polls in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh with its leaders designated for the job taking a bus ride from New Delhi to Kanpur. The bus was flagged off by party president Sonia Gandhi with her political heir Rahul Gandhi standing beside her.
The photographs of the event which appeared in the next day’s newspapers had some of these leaders looking out of the bus windows. One wondered did they have to do with Uttar Pradesh. Although Ghulam Nabi Azad and Sheila Dikshit are competent politicians and veterans of many political battles, Uttar Pradesh for them, for now, remains as good as a foreign territory. However, in the given situation, the party did not have many options either. They do not have very many leaders of stature left in their ranks.
Coming back to the picture of the veteran leaders taking a bus ride to Kanpur reminded me of a 1980 war film titled Sea Wolves starring Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, and David Niven.  The plot revolved around the British Army’s Operation Creek, which had Calcutta Light Horse’s covert attack against a German merchant ship anchored at Mormugao port in Portuguese-ruled Goa, then a neutral territory.
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Cutting losses in Kashmir

By Sidharth Mishra

Kashmir when calm inspires poetry, it inspires photography, it inspires good cinema and of course tourism. Kashmir when revisited by unrest invites journalists, prying on gore and blood. Ever since Hizbul commander Burhan Wani died about a fortnight back, the airtime and newspaper columns have been full of reports on Kashmir, each trying to outdo the other in blaming the government in finding a solution.
None, however, said what their diagnosis of the problem was. In being fashionably liberal, the mainstream media has just stopped short of giving “azaadi” to the Kashmiris. On the other hand, the new genre of so-called nationalist media has left nothing to chance in painting Kashmiris as monsters. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Finding a solution to the issue through a media dialogue should be the last thing on government’s agenda. Mehbooba Mufti “going into the shell” may not have hurt the Kashmiris as much as it has hurt the media, which has repeatedly questioned her credibility. A government needs to act and not just talk, as National Conference leadership of Farooq and Omar Abdullah were inclined to do.
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