KASHMIR SHUTDOWNS---2


Courtesy shutdowns, J&K is on verge of economic collapse

General trade alone suffers loss of Rs 40 Cr on each day of Hartal in Kashmir

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jun 24: If President of Kashmir Traders & Manufacturers Federation (KTMF), Sadiq Baqal, is to be believed, there are around 300,000 shops and various sales units in Kashmir valley. Quoting a survey, he said that 2,35,000 shops had been counted in the Valley two years ago. “In a comprehensive exercise, we have calculated that the Valley’s economy is suffering loss of Rs 100 Crore on each day of shutdown. General trade alone has been suffering loss of Rs 35 Cr to Rs 40 Cr on each day of shutdown”, Mr Baqal told Early Times [www.earlytimes.in].

Leading businessman and President Federation of Chambers & Industries Kashmir (FCIK), Shakeel Qallandar, seconded Mr Baqal and said that each day of a total strike would mean dent of Rs 100 Cr to the state economy. He added that the loss suffered by Kashmir was around 90% and even Jammu division, which rarely observes a shutdown, was being subjected to 10% of the damage on such a day.

With due regards to the spiraling macro economic indicators compiled by Directorate General of Planning and Statistics and presented alongwith his Budget in the Legislative Assembly by Finance Minister, Abdul Rahim Rather, Mr Qallandar insisted that Jammu & Kashmir state’s economy was on the verge of economic collapse. Taking exception to “prejudiced claims” from certain analysts in New Delhi and overseas that J&K was flourishing with a “visible as well as invisible economy”, Qallandar said: “Don’t go by the deceptive indicators of the flowing in vehicles and coming up houses. One must bear it in mind that J&K is currently suffering the trade deficit of Rs 27,000 Cr a year. Total volume of our exports is Rs 7,000 Cr today while as goods worth Rs 34,000 Cr are imported in a year”.

“Everybody in J&K is debt trapped. Residents have lifted loans worth Rs 22,000 Cr from different banks and their liquidity is dismal”, Qallandar added. According to him, in terms of overall economic development, J&K stood among the highest growing eight states in 1988 while as, mainly due to a hostile business atmosphere, it had over the years plummeted to the bottom. He claimed that in 2009, J&K was among the three states of the worst economic development. Yet another negative indicator was a survey by Transparency International which put J&K as India’s second worst state in terms of corruption.

With the state government’s latest statistics putting the number of unemployed youth (between age group of 18 to 37 years) at 600,000, Qallandar insisted that total number of the people with no assured or permanent source of income in J&K was currently 10 Lakh (one million). “Our unemployed ratio has already crossed the red mark of 10 percent. It was just 2 percent in 1988. With 1000,000 unemployed people, we, on the other hand, engage 500,000 skilled and unskilled labours from Bihar, UP, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Punjab and few other North Indian states every year. State does not have institutions to create its own workforce of the skilled labours”, he said.

Another leading entrepreneur, who wished anonymity, told Early Times that frequent shutdowns were the worst enemy of the Valley’s new generation. “If our separatist political leaders continued to fail to introduce some benign form of demonstration of protest in the next couple of years, they will be dismissed by history as the agents of destruction”, he cautioned. He revealed that thousands of youth from the families traditionally associated with Kashmir’s art and handicrafts, living on either side of erstwhile Nallah Mar Road, had been lured into a romanticism of stone pelting and enforcement of shutdown. “They neither work themselves not let others work”, he said while fearing extinction of Kashmir’s unique art and intellectual talent that made the Valley proud for centuries in the past.

(To be continued)

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