Indian Dream, Pakistani Nightmare

WHEN PAKISTANI TERRORISTS killed 26 Indian tourists on the Baisaran meadow at Pahalgam, with a total death toll of 28 subsequently, the bullets had another intended target: India’s strategy and efforts since 2019 to normalise the Kashmir Valley and integrate it in every sense with the rest of the country. Instead, Pakistan’s designs have brought it to the brink, for the third time in less than a decade. This is a direct challenge to India’s strategy in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and its efforts to speed up develop­ment and growth in the Union territory.

Soon after Article 370 ceased to operate in the erstwhile state, India realised that it needed to do more, much more, than merely rely on the twin-prongs of counterinsurgency and political normalisation in the Valley. Until that point—August 5, 20019—this was the accepted wisdom among India’s Kashmir hands. But events over 18 years from 1996 to 2014 showed that any strategy of normalisation that rested on these two pillars had run its course. The so-called mainstream politicians in Kashmir were reluctant to stamp out terrorism or were unable to do so. There was sus­picion that these parties “kept the pot boiling” to ensure their bargaining power with the Centre. Something else was needed.

That opportunity arose in 2019 when a local terrorist, at Pakistan’s instigation, blew 40 CRPF troopers in Pulwama on February 14. By that date it was clear that the constitutional and political status quo in J&K was untenable. But as with much else in India, drift ensued. In this specific case, however, February 14 became a turning point. India had lost much blood and treasure in J&K. Twelve days later India responded with an aerial strike on a terrorist hideout in Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan evaded an escalatory spiral by a whisker.

In August, India did what was necessary when it made Article 370 that gave a special status to J&K inoperative, even as it divided the state into two Union territories.

At the same time, Indian policymakers initiated the third prong of a strategy to fully integrate J&K. This was the strategy of development and economic progress. There was, and still remains, a thick section of people in the Union territory who continue to harbour separatist senti­ments. But after nearly six years of heavy investment in almost all sectors of Kashmir’s economy, India has managed to cultivate an integration­ist constituency which, ironically, was made impossible by Article 370. Pakistan’s unnerved attack at Pahalgam was in part due to this aspect of India’s strategy.

In 2021, two years after the Pulwama terrorist strike, a new industrial policy was launched in J&K. Since then, investment proposals worth ₹1.65 lakh crore have been received under the policy. The number of industrial units that have started work under the new policy is 2,055; another 697 units are in progress, with more than 25 per cent of work completed. In all, projects with investments worth ₹28,275 crore have either been completed or are in progress. By March 2026, the quantum of investment under new projects will go up to ₹38,224 crore.

In US dollar terms, this is close to $4.5 billion over a period of four years. The contrast with Pakistan’s economic condition could not be more glaring. That country is forced to expend its diplomatic en­ergy to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and rollover existing loans. In contrast, J&K is attracting invest­ments on its own in a land that continues to be hit by Pakistani terrorism. This is a level of investment Pakistan can only dream of even with its multiple benefactors.

That is not all. In sector after sector, J&K has made strides after 2019. In this, it has not been left behind by Indian states and Union territories. Consider drinking water and irrigation. Under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), an umbrella scheme of the Centre, a planned 19.21 lakh households were to be covered at a cost of ₹13,000 crore. Of these, nearly 81 per cent of the households have been covered and projects to cover the remaining 19 per cent are in progress. Un­der the Shahpur Kandi Dam project—on the river Ravi in Punjab that was commissioned in 2024—J&K is to receive 1,150 cusecs of water and 20 per cent of the electricity generated at low cost. This will create an irrigation potential of 32,000 hectares and will benefit farmers in Kathua and Samba districts of J&K. With India holding the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, J&K stands to benefit greatly in the coming years and decades from the utilisation of west flowing rivers that were unjustly allocated to Pakistan at its cost.

Providing tap water and increasing irrigation potential appear to be mundane activities but in reality it is this mundane work that is the stuff of nation-building. This unnerves Pakistan. How can India provide these amenities to far-flung households and farmers of J&K while Pakistan’s notion of nation-building in Balochistan involves excluding populations of entire districts from develop­ment projects in places like Gwadar, Pasni and Panjgur? How can India do what Pakistan cannot even think about?

These examples can be multiplied.

Consider education. J&K now boasts an Indian Institute of Tech­nology (IIT) and an Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the two flagship institutions that provide world-class education in science & technology and management in India. But that is not all: the exist­ing educational institutions in J&K are being revamped, strength­ened and provided with more resources. Universities and colleges are being accredited; more students are being enrolled. What Prime Minister Narendra Modi once dreamed of—taking away guns from the youth and giving them laptops—is already happening.

Pakistan is fully aware of India’s strategy in J&K.

Pakistan’s strategy pre-dates India’s current strategy and was put in place much before the insurgency began in J&K. It was based on a simple and partially true assumption. In the dying years of the British Raj, the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, the preeminent political force of the Kashmir Valley, split into the Mus­lim Conference (MC) and the National Conference (NC). The split reflected the political reality of that time. Over time NC gained po­litical strength not just because of the charisma of its leader, Sheikh Abdullah, but also due to the close association between Abdullah and India’s leadership. But that did not mean MC—which had ef­fectively shifted its base to Pakistan—was bereft of support in the Valley. Based on this reality, Pakistan attempted to use this schism in 1965 when it tried to engineer an uprising in the Kashmir Valley. That went nowhere and Pakistan was defeated in the war with India that year. Pakistan finally got the opening it had wanted in 1989 and the decade that followed was bloody and chaotic and witnessed the erosion of India’s political capital in the Valley.

The trouble for Pakistan is that its strategy was static; it was based on the assumption that India would not be able to respond to what Islamabad thought was the defining issue in the Kashmir Valley: religious identity. It was, as if, the ‘logic of Partition’ had to be implemented in one last province of the subcontinent before its culmination. In the period from 1989 to 2019, it seemed that this indeed was the case and India was only prolonging the inevitable separation of Kashmir. All of this changed after August 2019.

In the period after 2019, the Modi government has tried hard to shift the dynamics between religious conservatism and the politics it informs and the yearning for development and progress. The lat­ter have, to be sure, a much thinner slice of adherents compared to those who believe that identity politics based on religion is all that matters. This is a given as the original equilibrium of forces was frozen in place due to Article 370. A status quo that only shifted in favour of separatist politics based on religious identity over 70 years cannot be wished away in a mere five years. But over this time, the developmental idea has gained traction even as religious politics lurches towards what can be described as a dormant phase. This is due to not only the success of some ‘hearts and minds’ strategy on the part of the Centre. The reality in the Valley is that a strong counterinsurgency grid, the active discouragement of religious politics—at least its separatist part—and the strong emphasis on development have created an environment where there is grudg­ing acceptance that this is how things will be and that India has prevailed. It is this three-pronged strategy—counterinsurgency, political normalisation and development—that has made a dif­ference since 2019. While the exact dynamics between the three prongs is a matter for political scientists and historians to unpack— and many of them continue to be in denial that development can even be a useful part of India’s strategy—it is clear from the data that much has changed in the erstwhile violent Valley.

It is against this background that Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Pahalgam terrorist attack must be seen. What Pakistan hopes from such actions is to shift the dynamic back towards identity-cum-religious politics even as it tries to destabilise the Union territory through continuing terrorist attacks in the Jammu region. The Pahalgam attack was carefully designed to that end.

What it did not anticipate was India’s reaction. Under no circum­stances will the Modi government—and India at large—allow the hard won peace in J&K to fall victim to such machinations. And that is one reason why India is willing to take the fight home to Pakistan.

In the coming days and weeks, India will respond to Pakistan. That is certain. It is time New Delhi thought of a me­dium to long-term strategy to defang Pakistan. The holding of the IWT in abeyance is an excellent choice from that perspective. India now needs dams and irrigation projects that can turn off Pakistan’s water tap. There is no other way except by delivering an existential threat that the Islamic republic can be tamed. It is the only way to disabuse Pakistan of the notion that Kashmir is its “jugular vein”. But it is also a harsh truth that deterring Paki­stan is a continuous process and not a one-shot proposition. That country defines its existence as a negative mirror image of India. Keeping it deterred requires political resolve in India and a resort to an armed response to the delusional politicians and generals in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. India has to mow down the grass in Pakistan as soon as it grows. There is no other way to preserve India’s hard-won prizes since Independence.

India-Pakistan relationsKashmir developmentKashmiriPahalgamterror attacktourism