With the assembly elections just months away, Jammu and Kashmir’s politics is heating up and all the three major mainstream contenders — the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), its partner Congress and the opposition National Conference (NC) — have already launched their poll campaigns. Unlike the last elections, the dilemma of the 2008 assembly polls is, however, clear: no party has an agenda and a slogan to attract public support.

The new realities in both India and Pakistan, in fact, have shifted the political discourse in the Valley, and mainstream political parties have already started repositioning their agendas to fit in the day-to-day concerns of the population. Thus employment and development are becoming the main poll planks across party lines while the levels of political bitterness and rivalry have returned to pre-militancy electioneering.

There are many reasons for this. For the first time since the emergence of militancy, there are clear signals from Pakistan accommodating the mainstream political process. The recent statement of the prime minister of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, Sardar Ateeq Khan, supporting the election process in Kashmir is, in fact, one of many indications from across the border that suggest a change in Pakistani policy, at least towards the elections. The statement from the co-chairperson of the PPP, Asif Ali Zardari, and the sidelining of the Kashmir issue in the recent poll manifestoes of almost all the Pakistani political parties too provided a new space to the mainstream actors here. This Pakistani shift began with the events of 9/11 and that change was immediately exploited by the PDP in the 2002 elections when they emerged as a strong Kashmir-centric political party, hijacking the moderate separatist agenda and thus winning a major chunk of assembly constituencies in Kashmir.

... contd.