Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has finally spoken on Kashmir. And coming after 51 Kashmiris were killed by Indian security forces over the past two months of his silence, he offered some relief to many across the country who were beginning to suspect that the Dilbert Principle – “To err is human, to cover it up is weasel” – was truly at play in New Delhi. Singh spoke in Urdu, using the flowery language well to spice up his emotional appeal to the outraged stone-throwing youth of the badly brutalized land. Other than that, his speech was hollow. PDP patron and former chief minister Mufti Mohd Sayeed dismissed Singh's appeal – “give peace a chance” – as a “joke with the people of Kashmir.” Hardline Hurryat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani was unmoved as well. He said Singh's offer of an economic and employment package was no solution at all to the Kashmir problem. They are both right. The speech broke no new ground at this very perilous juncture for India with Kashmiri women, children and teenagers out in the streets in desperate Intifada-style protest. Abject misgovernance for over a year has made Kashmir quite a lost cause, yet Singh showed no out-of-the-box thinking, no guts to take a risk and show the stuff of great leadership. Of course, despite what Geelani had to say, economic development and jobs for the teenagers who make up more than half the population of Kashmir is a good idea. In fact, Singh must be applauded for deciding to set up a high-level group – including Infosys founding chairman N. R. Narayana Murthy – to formulate a plan within three months to improve the “employability” of youth in the state. But Singh went no further than that. He had nothing to say about the long festering prison-like atmosphere of Kashmir under Indian “occupation.” Surely the two elections held in the state over the past 10 years are no measure of progress made on the core issue – the right to self determination. Singh should have gone further and taken the risk to announce once and for all that rightful light that the Kashmiris deserve to see at the end of their dark tunnel. Given the ground reality today in the region and the neighborhood, India cannot put off that game-changing decision any longer. Good politics is about making confident forecasts and good governance is about delivering on them. India today has the economic clout, human resources and skills-set to dare to dream big. We are already seeing the impossible being achieved by our world renowned corporates and institutions of medicine, management, science and technology. Economic superpower status in the 21st century is well within sight. Ten years down the road, if all goes well, India will be a better place. So why not Jammu and Kashmir too? Why not announce a 10-year plan for J&K with clear goals set for every year, culminating in a final reward of a referendrum on Kashmiri self-determination if all the goals are systematically achieved? Here's how it could work. Set up a Kashmir Development Fund (KDF) and sustain it with a one-rupee tax across the country on every purchase above Rs100 and a 1 percent annual tax on business profits above Rs1 crore. The fund will go toward achieving a Year 2020 vision of making Kashmir India's one and only truly “green” state, compelete with clean technologies used in every aspect of infrastructure development that is best suited for the scenic and healthy mountainous region. Get the IITs, IIMs and NGOs involved in drawing up and participating in building up and maintaining the educational and training infrastruture for developing a skilled local manpower base to run a Kashmir that can thrive alongside India in the 21st century. To further ensure inclusive development, make the whole state a special economic zone and use part of the KDF as seed money for business incubators and, subsequently, cooperatives of Kashmiris who part-own and run the ventures. Let the restless youth of the state prove themselves, achieve their individual ambitions and better their lives. All this must be conditional on the Kashmiris themselves ensuring peace and security in their land until Vision 2020 is achieved. At present it is impossible to pull out the security forces and hand over security to the Kashmiris. But given the 2020 promise of a referendum, there is a faint chance that a good number of Kashmiris will be encouraged to stand up and deliver, say in about five years' time – the end of Phase 1. Phase 2 could possibly be focused on developing Kashmir as a strong commercial buffer zone for trade between India and Pakistan. This would mean simultaneous progress in India-Pakistan peace talks – another huge challenge and risk that must be taken. All this may seem far-fetched but the fact is that events in Kashmir in the past two months have pricked the concience of Indians across the country. The newspapers, even the vernacular press, are full of articles about the tragedy of the poor Kashmiris. A kinship seems to be developing, even in distant south India. There is some acceptance that the Kashmir problem is not quite one of religious and cross-border extremism and that the Kashmiris too must be included in India's fast evolving economic success story. The only problem with this vision is whether it can be sustained given that Indian politicians tend to survive on this other Dilbert Principle on the way of the weasel: “When people hear a confident forecast… they leave your cubicle and get on to the important business of misinterpreting what you said and forgetting that you exist.”
