Kashmir: Management by Crisis

Business textbooks offer two different types of management: Management by Planning and Management by Crisis.

Top professional companies spend inordinate amount of time, money and efforts in planning. Most of them will have a clear vision, well-articulated mission and a roadmap to show how to get to the desired destination. Ten-year plans are broken into three or five year plans. Half a year is spent in creating a detailed plan for the following year. All plans are well-written and available to those responsible for executing them. This is Management by Planning.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies that don’t believe in or are incapable of good planning. Every time they face a crisis, usually quite frequently, they devise schemes and solutions to deal with it. Those companies keep moving from one crisis to another. In absence of planning, complex activities requiring long lead-times don’t happen. If such companies launch a new product, its advertising and distribution rarely happen together. Those companies are sloppy, unprofessional, unreliable and irresponsible. Their way of working is Management by crisis. 

The ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir had signed the Instrument of Accession joining India (subject to certain conditions) on 26 October 1947, more than seventy years ago. In those seven decades India and Pakistan have fought wars over Kashmir, the gory history of Kashmir is marked by militant attacks and round-the-clock presence of Indian army, Hindu Kashmiri pundits were killed or made refugees, and a division of the beautiful Kashmir valley with both sides accusing one another of occupation is a permanent feature. Sections 370 (allowing autonomy, own flag and own constitution to Kashmir) and section 35 A (preserving the landowning rights of the native male population) had maintained the ‘temporary’ arrangement of Kashmir being part of India and autonomous at the same time. Changing that seventy-year arrangement required a complex, detailed roadmap.

Where is that roadmap?

Management by Crisis and Shock Therapy

Competent individuals, companies and nations are sometimes forced to manage by crisis. An earthquake is a good example. Technology keeps improving but is not yet able to accurately predict each earthquake. The January 2001 Bhuj earthquake where 20,000 people lost their lives or the December 2004 massive Tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people required management by crisis. In such cases, the government is forced to take emergency measures, some of them work and others go wrong. It is not fair to expect precise activity plan and timetables.

Changing Kashmir’s status was not a nature-made crisis. The BJP government that promised this step in its manifesto has been in power for more than five years. Five years is a sufficiently long time for meticulously planning such a complex change intervention. Before execution, the plan should give a clear roadmap of the duration of each sub-activity.

A complete communication blackout, however reprehensible, may have been essential. If the Indian government had said phones and internet would remain shut for a month, that could have been accepted as part of a planned timetable. However, what transpires now is that there is no roadmap, no timetable. It is purely management by crisis. A cowboy policy of shooting first and asking questions later.

This is the second instance where Narendra Modi has indulged in giving a shock treatment to the nation. First, demonetization, an entirely man-made crisis with awfully inadequate planning. Integration of Kashmir is the second Modi-manufactured crisis. For professionally executing such a project, a completely transparent roadmap could have been created for the world to see and debate. On one hand, the Indian State, a section of its sycophant media, and the ideologically inflamed masses claim to be militarily far superior, capable of confronting or crushing any terrorists. On the other hand, Indian Kashmir has been made invisible for three weeks, its leaders detained, curfew ordered, pilgrimages cancelled, army presence enhanced. Why such secrecy? Why such bullish behavior by a democratic state?

Because like demonetization, the Kashmir project is botched by a complete lack of planning.

Where is the talk about people?

The only two public documents made available by the Indian government are a 55-page “Jammu and Kashmir reorganization act, 2019” (dated 9 August 2019) and a 58-page “The Jammu and Kashmir reorganization bill, 2019” (dated 5 August 2019). Strangely, though not surprisingly, neither document discusses people in Kashmir.

For comparison, look at the 29-page German reunification treaty. East Germany, freed from communism with the fall of the Berlin wall, was absorbed in West Germany. The document calls it the East Germany’s accession to West Germany. From the Indian viewpoint, revoking article 370 is somewhat similar to that. It is Kashmir’s accession or re-accession to India, though Pakistan may view it as an annexation.

In the German unification document, its article 17 talks about rehabilitation of and compensation for all political victims. Article 31 talks about the welfare of families and women.

Why the two documents published by the Indian government have no reference to planned steps for rehabilitation of Kashmiri people? Those living there and those displaced? Where is the timeline for reducing and finally eliminating the presence of army? Where are the amnesty measures for the political prisoners?

When the documents don’t mention people, it is not unreasonable to call the accession an annexation.

Technicality and reality

In life, one can be technically right and morally wrong. Right in the letter of law, and wrong in its spirit. Morality is a virtue much superior to technicality.

Let us compare Crimea’s joining Russia in 2014. The world considers it an annexation orchestrated by Putin. Crimea, technically, belonged to Ukraine, and Russia with its sly maneuvering shamelessly grabbed it. That is the general perception. However, objective analysis shows Crimea had been Russian for more than 200 years. Since the time the Russian empress Catherine conquered it in 1783 by defeating the Ottoman Empire. Nikita Khruschev, a Soviet ruler, enigmatically gifted it to Ukraine in 1954. European Union inviting Ukraine to join the EU hastened Crimea’s transfer to Russia. (Read my detailed analysis of the Crimea question here). Crimea returning to Russia, though technically wrong, was morally fine. Because most Crimean people consider themselves to be Russian. They were happy to replace their Ukrainian passports with the Russian ones.

With Kashmir, it is exactly the reverse. In this exercise of re-accession, Kashmiri people are missing. Surrounded by Indian army men, Kashmiris are Indian citizens without pride or love for that citizenship. As we saw above, Indian government has come up with political promises without specific plans. The documents are not two-sided treaties, but unilateral bureaucratic acts or bills. They inform the affected party what the rulers have decided. No referendum has been held, no public opinion of Indian Kashmiris sought before the revolutionary change in their status.

Indian government’s Kashmir accession is, therefore, technically correct, but morally wrong.

Healthy body with a cancer

India takes pride in calling itself the largest democracy in the world. Indian Democracy has been a source of envy even for Pakistanis. Ruled over by military for most of its history, rational Pakistanis have, albeit grudgingly, looked at democratic India and its institutions as something Pakistan should emulate. Indian democracy has been a role model for South East Asia, if not the entire Asian continent. With the latest events, the other Asian countries will cease to look at it as a democratic icon. Worse, if authoritarianism and populism become India’s stable features, India’s neighbours will legitimately start copy-pasting them in their own countries.

As a person living in Bombay, and not in Kashmir, I am immensely proud of Indian democracy. I still feel it, breathe it, and I can fearlessly criticize anyone and anything I feel worth criticizing.

The problem is that no democratic nation can be partially democratic. A democratic State cannot have an autocratic state inside it. You can’t govern most of the country with a civilian rule, and part of it with an army. It’s like saying a person is perfectly healthy, but has cancer in one part of his body. Such health is not sustainable. Sooner or later, the cancer inevitably spreads to the other parts of the body.

India can’t be a democracy, and destroy it in Kashmir at the same time. It’s not yet late. Indian government must take steps to make the Kashmiri accession morally right.

Ravi