Voices Anand Neelakantan Sheila Kumar dilip sinha Balaji Vittal sathya saran Mata Amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI September 29 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Gen Z-Kashmir A New Tide Kashmiri youth vote will play a significant role in the first J&K election after Article 370 was scrapped. From Azadi to KFC, the Valley’s youth want more than empty slogans about restoring Special Status—they demand jobs, technology and individual freedom A By iram ara ibrahim in srinagar es che panin majboori.. election chu zaroori.” “Nakli Shera yeti wath dera, asli shera aagya.” (We have our own compulsions, only elections can sort them. Fake lion should make an exit, the real deal is here). The slogans haven’t changed. Only, the audience has. In new Kashmir, Gen Z is suppressing a big yawn. Many of the old battlehorses of Azad Kashmir have either gone to azadi heaven or jail, and there doesn’t seem to be much appetite among youngsters for claiming their thrones. Although Article 370 is a topic as hot as the pizza at Pizza Hut in the City Walk Shopping Mall on MA Road, the young Kashmiri is dreaming of a new kind of freedom: jobs, jeans and pizzazz. Outside the postcard-perfect lake and the Pir Panjal mountain range lazing under a floating cloud cover on late summer afternoons, the election campaign—the first after delimitation and scrapping of J&K’s special status—is noisily underway The . Valley wanted change. Now, it is in the air. With the last phase to be held on October 1, the sirens of VVIP convoys and hectic electioneering activity have punctured the peace of the Dal where quails move away from approaching shikaras and tourists smilingly get fleeced at the floating market. These, however, will never change. “Change will come to Kashmir when our youth get gainfully employed. The pandemic took away two precious years of college life, and in turn, the students’ eligibility to apply for government jobs. The unemployment rate in J&K was recorded to be 18.3 per cent in January way higher than the , national average. We want to give them extended time for job applications. Our party used to provide free coaching to students in my father’s constituency , Langate. We want to extend that to everybody Our young generation has a . lot of potential. We want them to participate in national sports events, too,” says Abrar Rashid, 22, whose father Abdul Rashid Sheikh alias Engineer Rashid, 57, beat former chief minister and National Conference (NC) chairperson Omar Abdullah with over two lakh votes from the Baramulla Parliamentary seat earlier this year. Rashid is out on bail, after his arrest in 2019 for advocating separatism and charged by the NIA under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). He was granted bail on September 11 to campaign for the Assembly election. However, the victor in this election will need the nod from Kashmir’s Gen Z and millennials. The J&K government’s Mission Youth Scheme pegs the population below the age of 35 at about 69 per cent. It is a population that wants more. Change is in the air. And it’s not what the politicians think. Gen Z will not vote blindly following azadi sentiments and separatist ideals. Nor will they swallow the BJP’s new deal without loads of salt. This time Gen Z-K wants to listen. They want to know. Where are the jobs and where will they come from? When will new technology like AI, which is already racing through the world’s software empires, become accessible to them? When will the fate and conduct of girls in the Valley not be decided by the clergy? The Valley decides the ethos of the rest of the state. Today’s youth are willing to call out the hypocrisy with less compunction than their folks. “Why is it important for Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, Iltija, to cover her head during campaigning when she doesn’t do so otherwise? We want Naya Kashmir, which is a break from the past, but have we addressed patriarchal practices that we hardsell as culture in Kashmir? I know, for a fact, many young women do not want to wear the hijab here, but there is family and societal pressure on them to do so. Iltija has become a youth icon. I wish she addressed these issues too,” says 18-year-old Kashif Nabi (name changed on request), first-year English literature student of Government Degree College, Baramulla. More than their parents, who survived or perished (estimated 41,000 between 1990 and March 2017 according to government data) in the conflict, could aspire for; more than what the poll pamphlets of the myriad political formations like Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party promise; more than what they themselves can put out as a structured thought—Kashmir’s Gen Z wishes to go where AI takes them. They want the same jobs that the rest of India covets, and want to dream the Big Dream while trying out the new pair of anti-fits at the Superdry store. Is it the Indian Dream or the Kashmiri Dream? They haven’t voted on that one yet. “Hum womens log ke liye gym centre kholenge (We will build gyms for the women),” proclaims Jamaat-e-Islamibacked candidate Sayar Ahmad from Kulgam constituency in a video that , went viral. “The Jamaat will give us gym centres? They should first stop dictating our dress codes!” adds Nabi. The political uncertainties and the violent nature of the conflict in the region have led to the voice of women being ignored for decades. Now, the buzzing social media trends are showing Kashmir’s young women sculpting bodies they want for themselves. Iltija or Omar are both rookie and known faces in the electoral fray The . clichés of electoral promises appear like mallards on the Lake during migration season, the top among them Food vlogger Junaid-ul-Wahid visits the KFC outlet in City Mall, Srinagar are ending unemployment and restoration of Article 370; gingerly handled by the Congress. But in the tony cafes and college campuses in Srinagar, at evening soirees and family dinner debates, Kashmiri youth seem to be in a hurry to shake off the past of martyrdom and Valley intifada, though this is not to say that dissent and dissatisfaction doesn’t lurk beneath. “We have our own struggles like managing work-life balance. Intifada is not for me,” says Nabi. If youth like her are turning their back on the past, the present comes with new unanswered questions such as how and why old separatists are surfacing as independent candidates just before polls. Jailed cleric and separatist Sarjan Barkati’s 17-year-old daughter Sugra has been campaigning extensively for him for the Beerwah and Ganderbal Assembly seats. However, the paradigm is shifting. Ambitions and mental dimensions have changed. Gen-Z Kashmir, perhaps, wants to break free of the claustrophobia of protests that has claimed so many lives and careers. O ver paranthas and piping hot chai sipped in paper cups inside the canteen at Sri Pratap College, Maulana Azad Road in Lal Chowk, Faizan Mohmad Zargar and Asif Bhat, both 22, are talking about everything except elections. Zargar wants to learn AI. “Elon Musk taught me AI on X. I follow his tweets daily and every time he , talks about AI, I see my future. I want to go where AI takes me,” he says. Zargar and Bhat are third-year BSc students in Information Technology . They originally belong to North Kashmir, the region that saw militancy at its peak in the ’90s. Prod them on politics, and out comes a sliver of disappointment. “We want better infra, better healthcare, better educational options and, yes, we want to find employment in the private sector. Political parties can’t come to power “This election is more about reclaiming the right to speak and the right to make decisions on our issues ourselves.” Waheed Para, PDP’s ‘heartthrob’ with women voters in Pulwama on old promises anymore. Their election rhetoric has to speak to us, they have to write down our aspirations in their election manifestos,” says Zargar. According to a June 7 report in Greater Kashmir, the guidelines for the private industrial estate development policy are in the final stages of preparation in the UT. Zargar and Bhat were barely 17 when Article 370 was abrogated. “I hardly knew anything about J&K’s special status. Whatever I learnt about it, was after it was scrapped. The only thing that concerns young adults in my generation in Kashmir is to be at par with the youth in other big cities in India. Café culture has grown in Srinagar, jobs should do too. There are some who still prefer the safety net of government jobs. We want vacant spots in the services to be filled and more new jobs to be added by whoever comes to power,” says Zargar. Bhat concurs. He believes Kashmir’s Gen Z needs to be at the forefront of transforming Kashmir to Naya Kashmir. But what is Naya Kashmir? “Naya Kashmir is a break from old lies, a chance to begin afresh,” says Bhat with a flourish. “People who boycotted elections in the ’90s, participated in the Lok Sabha elections this year. What do we make of them? I am satisfied with the BJP’s J&K policy . The lingering issue of unemployment must be looked into. Many educated Kashmiris wait for government jobs until they exceed the age limit and stay unemployed. Another issue is that J&K doesn’t benefit from its own resources as much as other states. The idea of turning Srinagar into a smart city doesn’t only mean better roads and signboards,” he says. Bhat wants better waste management in the UT. “The government should build proper dumping sites. Agricultural fields are getting polluted due to improper planning. There is no proper drainage system in rural areas. Remember the devastating floods in 2014? The ineptitude of the irrigation and flood control department would have killed so many more if the rescue operations were not carried out on time,” he says. He believes the health sector needs an overhaul, especially in rural areas. Many district hospitals there don’t even have a working X-ray machine. Patients are referred to Srinagar. Sometimes these hospitals can’t even attend to a pregnant woman about to deliver. For both Zargar and Bhat, development should go beyond Srinagar’s facelift. “I appreciate more movie theatres coming to the capital, but rural areas are in dire need of basic amenities. We need better schools. The faculty should be answerable to the higher authority if Turn to page 2