National

After Kashmir shrine war, a compensation battle

SOPORE: Flashes of blood red glint through the lush green of the orchards that sprawl across northern Kashmir: the colours of the best apple harvest in years.

Sopore’s markets are packed, and the main highway through the town jammed with traffic. Few people appeared to be paying attention to secessionist calls for a shutdown to be observed after Friday prayers.

It is almost as if the murderous, communally-charged violence which tore apart Jammu and Kashmir this summer had never occurred.

Over the coming weeks, the Jammu and Kashmir government intends to consolidate the peace by compensating fruit producers and other business interests for their losses through the summer’s violence. There are signs, though, that the compensation process will be politically fraught.

Kashmir Fruit Growers Association head Ghulam Rasool Bhat, whose organisation spearheaded the attempted march across the Line of Control which triggered bloody clashes between police and protesters through August, says he is undecided on even whether to talk to the government.

“We have lost over Rs. 600 crore because of the blockade of the Srinagar-Jammu highway by Hindu fundamentalist groups,” he says, “and the government must compensate us for these losses.” However, Mr. Bhat says the FGA will not join negotiations “unless the government addresses the demands for which 40 of our young men gave their lives.”

The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for its part, says it is willing to engage the government in dialogue but on terms which appear unlikely to lead to a rapid resolution of its compensation demands.

“India acknowledges that there is a dispute in Jammu and Kashmir,” says KCCI chief Mobin Shah, who participated, “so now it accepts that it is responsible for the losses caused to us by an agitation linked to this larger question. So, it should compensate us for all losses caused by the dispute since 1947.”

Calculating even the losses incurred since July won’t be easy. In the case of the horticulture industry, for example, almost every relevant issue from the scale of income to the size of losses are disputed.

While the industry and state politicians say that horticulture generated in the neighbourhood of Rs. 1,600 crore in 2006-2007, neither the union nor state governments seem to agree.

A Union Ministry of Finance website on public-private partnership places the figure at $ 10.5 million, or approximately Rs. 44 crore. And according, to the Jammu and Kashmir government’s official website, horticulture generates revenues of “over Rs. 50 crore yearly.”

Deciding an appropriate level of compensation is rendered even more difficult by the fact that no one is certain just how much of the fruit crop was in fact destroyed.

Both major varieties of pear Williams and Chinese Sandy matured in July. So, too, would three varieties of apple. Benoni, known locally as Hazratbali, matures in mid-July, as does a low-grade Bulgarian variety used Cox’s Orange Pippin, which is called Kesri in Kashmir, matures in mid-August. All these would have been hit by traffic disruption through July, but it is hard to say just how hard, since fruit trucks did intermittently leave Sopore.

Most apple varieties, over 90 percent of the crop, are yet to ripen. Delicious, the most widely-grown variety, will only be ready for harvest at the end of September. American Apirogue, or American Trel, will also ripen at around the same time. Ambri Kashmiri will come on to the market in the first week of October, while the late-maturing White Dotted Red will only ripen at the end of next month.

Much will depend on the ability of industry and government to resolve these issues but politics could render an agreement hard to arrive at.

Both the KCCI and the FGA were members of the secessionist-linked Action Committee Against Land Transfer, which spearheaded the first phase of the agitation against land-use rights granted to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board.

In July, Shah was quoted as saying his organisation decided to join ACALT when “the shrine board said they were planning to build a dam and generate electricity.” He charged the shrine board with behaving like a “parallel government.”

Both the KCCI and FGA do not want to be seen as breaking ranks with secessionist groups, but are under intense pressure from their rank and file not to allow a fresh round of economically-damaging protests to break out.

Some in the Jammu and Kashmir government, meanwhile, are concerned that large-scale compensation for parties to the shrine board protests would amount to subsidising secessionism.

How these multiple pressures are managed could hold the keys to peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

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