A group consisting of concerned Indian citizens (prominent former government officials and civil society leaders) visited Srinagar from August 17 to 19, 2017.

The visiting group consisted of the following:
1. Yashwant Sinha (Former Indian External Affairs Minister )
2. Wajahat Habibullah (Former Indian Chief Information Commissioner and former Chairman of India's National Minorities Commission)
3. Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Kapil Kak
4. Bharat Bhushan (Editor, Catchnews) and
5. Sushobha Barve (Executive Program Director of Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation – CDR)

The most disquieting conclusion of the interactions that the CCG had with Kashmiri students, civil society and political leaders this time around was that as compared to the previous visits, the sense of dismay and despondency in the people had grown. The proximate reasons for this not only seemed to be the lack of dialogue with the Kashmiris but also because tourism had plummeted, hotel business was in dire straits, there was flight of capital and an overall economic downturn leading to greater unemployment and economic distress. The situation was much worse than the previous two years.

There was all round opposition to attempts to revoke Article 35A of the Constitution of India. The judicial ranking of the Article 35A issue seems to have pushed the demand for ‘Azadi’ to the background (it has, however, neither disappeared nor become secondary, only less urgent) as people see the attempts to change rules for special rights of people of J&K as an existential threat of changing the Valley’s demographic profile. People believe that revoking Article 35A can potentially lead to a demographic change in the state as outsiders are facilitated to buy land and property in the state. This was completely unacceptable to them.

As far as new recruits to militancy are concerned, many felt that they required a greater outreach to be brought into the mainstream. They have hardly any weapons, no training but are very high on motivation.

The Kashmir Valley used to get about 15 lakh tourists in the summer season in a good year. Up to August 17 this year, the total number of tourists had come down to 6.73 lakh as compared to 11.43 lakh last year for the same period...The local tourist industry representatives claim that Kashmir is not being sold as a destination in the rest of India. They are under the impression that this is a part of a larger conspiracy to finish off Kashmir’s economy, and some private national TV channels are playing a damaging role by projecting all Kashmiris as terrorists and making out as if Kashmir were a war-zone. These TV channels had single handedly managed to project Kashmiris as a hated community in the rest of India.

Some Kashmiris go to the extent of saying that all institutions in J&K are discredited and what is worse is that there are no political leaders with unquestioned credentials. So people have no faith either in the system or the mainstream political leaders.

A copy of this report was made available courtesy KashmirLife.