Full-Page Admission In Jammu And Kashmir

Governor Satya Pal Malik’s administration on Friday pricked it’s own “all is well” balloon, not just acknowledging, even if obliquely, how bad the situation was in the Valley but blazoning it across the front pages of newspapers. The admission came in the form of an advertising blitz in local newspapers, urging people to resume their businesses and send their children to school.

They contained a plea to parents to secure “a rightful education” and “secure the future for our children”, virtually owning up that students had been staying away from the officially reopened colleges and schools. The ads belied the “Kashmir is normal” narrative that the central and state governments had been peddling since day one of the 10-week-old security clampdowns that accompanied the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on August 5