Brand Lalu signals hope in the valley

Lalu Prasad Yadav should have contested the elections from Kashmir. He would have not only won by a handsome margin, in all likelihood his opponents would have lost their deposits. That is not excluding the formidable Farooq Abdullah in his strife-torn hot seat of Srinagar. Lalu’s presence may have even propelled the voting to a more respectable percentage than the 24 per cent registered last Thursday!

This is only half in jest. It would be heartening for Lalu – fighting, with his back to the wall, rebuffs from New Delhi and a changing electoral arithmetic in Bihar – to know that the people in this alienated Valley are far more gracious in their appreciation than his erstwhile ally and its Gen-next leader. In their acknowledgement of gratitude towards the outgoing Union Railway Minister, the people here are fulsome in praise.

So instead of New Delhi and Patna, it is the commoners in Srinagar, Budgam, Anantnag and Baramulla who are endorsing Brand Lalu and hailing his efforts to change the image of the Indian Railways to that of a performing asset and a deliverer of dreams. In a state where India-bashing is a popular sport, the railway stations from Anantnag to Baramulla are islands of hope where dissent seems to temporarily dissolve and election talk seems to be a welcome diversion from the daily drudgery.

This is the only place where the overwhelming presence of the paramilitary forces does not invite snide remarks or evoke cold anger from the locals. Even the security forces seem to be in a better frame of mind, protecting an asset of the people rather than wielding guns to regulate and monitor the very people and lands they were primarily called upon to protect. And, Lalu seems to be the hero of this alternative reality that has been created in the midst of an overall atmosphere of suspicion.

For the average Kashmiri, by bringing railway connectivity inside an isolated Kashmir, Lalu has pulled off what no one else could in the last 30 years. While others promised, the people here say, he delivered. The train ticket from Srinagar to Anantnag costs Rs 10 and the time taken for travel is a mere one hour. All the way from Baramulla to Anantnag – currently the two end-terminals – would be just double that.

Compare this to what the people had to do before the brand-new coaches – with their wide fibre-glass windows that allow a panoramic view of the picturesque valley – chugged in: pay a minimum of Rs 60 in an overcrowded, shared Sumo on the gutted roads or get on a bus that took them anything between three to five hours to reach the same destination. From Baramulla to Anantnag, certainly, it was a prospect that people tended to find an excuse to avoid.

Mohammad Afzal Mir, travelling with his wife and two daughters to attend a family function, said “They’ve devised a clever plan, kept the ticket prices low to increase the volume of passengers. It is a win-win formula for both the Indian Railways and the people here. The train has become an instant hit.” On an average, each trip carts across up to 3,000 people in the eight coaches with a seating capacity of 1,500.

Between Anantnag in the south and Budgam just beyond Srinagar, there are four trips a day. Only twice daily does this extend beyond Budgam all the way up to Baramulla – once starting from there in the morning, once returning in the evening. Abdul Rashid Wani, a local PWD employee, makes a request, “Please write that we need more trains to Baramulla and in the morning hours.”

In the southern end, the existing route would soon extend to Qazigund, the last point in the Valley before the Pir Panjal looms up: the tracks are being laid. Work is also on to connect this with Jammu, through the mountain range, but it is a technically complex project and could take a few years to complete. Despite their usual sulks about the Indian state, even the students en route grudgingly admit, “The train has made a world of difference. It has changed our way of life and its quality too.” It is one place where they freely discuss issues with people they have never met before – politics, the prospects of various candidates, the new Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, his decision to implement the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations,  tit-bits on the Hurriyat leadership.

That the train happened during the tenure of the last Congress-PDP government and thanks to Manmohan Singh’s quiet yet persistent wooing of Kashmir goes either unmentioned or ignored. The Srinagar-Anantnag route passes through the PDP’s core political constituency: Bijbehara, where Mufti Mohammed Sayeed comes from, falls en route. Given that there is generally a lot of appreciation for the Mufti regime’s Kashmir-centric policies everywhere, one would have expected them to corner some of the credit. But it’s as if they have played their hand – and lost. For no particular reason, except the pendulum swing factor that afflicts many state elections in India, the strife-fatigued people of Kashmir seem to be again giving the Abdullahs a bit of leg-space.

There’s no denying though that an underlying fear exists everywhere. More so as the NC’s previous tenures coincided with the worst phase of militancy. Passengers on the train, in their avid discussions, are well aware that the Abdullahs might just take a false step and the small gains made in the last five years (in terms of the peace quotient) could come undone.

Eager to share his views, Habibullah Mallick, a little more urbane than other passengers, comes forward to provide context to the cacophony of views. “We sometimes find it hard to believe that something like this could actually happen in Kashmir. That it was possible for a government to implement a project (like the train service).”

People raised on anti-India rhetoric, of course, claim the demand had come long ago from within the state and New Delhi sat on it for 30 years. Records, however, reveal that it was IK Gujral during his short stint as prime minister who had inked the project. In many ways, the train encapsulates the Kashmir story and the little resolutions that can be noticed here and there amidst all the contradictions. The revocation of the dreaded Special Task Force of the J&K police, which was a law unto itself during the height of militancy, is one of them. “They could pick up anybody from anywhere, bump off people at any point of time on mere suspicion. Those were terrible times…,” one of the passengers says, lest we fail to fathom the magnitude of suffering.

The train, the relative relaxation of the security situation, the success story of the J&K Bank, these are the elements that add up to make the current scenario a bit better than before. But to get the people out to vote during parliamentary elections, it would take much more than silenced guns. Maybe a reduction of troops from the civilian areas, as promised by Omar, could bring a sense of relief, calm the minds and also defang the Hurriyat. The separatist leaders do have some hold over the people’s psyche, especially in the inner-city lanes of old Srinagar. This despite the tales that abound about their unaccounted wealth and prosperity!