Monitoring Desk: Indian Occupied Kashmir is officially sold out to big corporate businessmen and groups of Mumbai and Delhi, indicates writer and journalist Evita Das in her article “Was Kashmir being readied for demographic change even before Article 370 was scrapped?” published in News Laundry.
“was it merely a coincidence that this vision of the city’s future appeared just a few months before the Kashmiri people were stripped of their constitutional safeguards?,” she questioned.
Non-Kashmiris are key buyers and foremost stakeholders of the city of Srinagar. Other cities would be incorporated in this mega plan once the project of a Special Investment Corridor is completed in Srinagar.
“This is Kashmir’s capital envisioned in the Srinagar Master Plan 2035. What is behind this vision? Whom is it for? And, crucially, was it merely a coincidence that this vision of the city’s future appeared just a few months before the Kashmiri people were stripped of their constitutional safeguards?,” she questioned.
She believes that for the Indian state, the recasting of Srinagar’s future is achieved not through a single transformative act but a continuous process of creating a system of domination. The transformation is brought about through the use of the administrative apparatus, the legal system, the economic order, the monopoly of violence, and, of course, cultural domination.
“Here, I aim to examine planning documents and policies for Srinagar to understand whom they are meant to benefit? Who will be a citizen and who second-class citizens in this urban fabric? And does the Master Plan foretell a migrant influx into Srinagar?,” she said.
She explained her point with demographic and development data and satellite imageries.
