Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Our underperforming and ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of our political ills. Kashmir has failed to integrate with India and it has not failed to long for Pakistan or independence. It has ridiculously bad performance in human development and other important indices. Its underperforming or ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of its political ills. It has been weakness for rice that has been, both in symbolic and literal senses, at the centre stage of fight for Kashmir’s political future. Now Kashmir is a disaster in terms of management of natural resources (a huge fraction of them were never even considered for tapping and have been locked for reasons not difficult to fathom), unprecedented employment crisis (too many casual jobs implying casual attitude to future, most of important sectors like agriculture and livestock unorganized, mostly alienation in jobs  and we have mostly jobs that drain us further in the long run imply...

An open letter to the Chief Minister of J & K on Wild Management Plan for Vandalization of Historical Heritage Farm at Dachigam. Dedicated to the dumb sheep and their reportedly deaf shepherds, and the oppressed Hangul. Hon’ble Madam, “As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent” sheep farm suffering for a crime it did not commit.  “I defy decent men to read it without a stir of indignation in their hearts and a cry of revulsion, at the thought of the undeserved punishment being meted out.” Compelled by my professional obligations wedded to Hippocratic oath and thanks to my long standing interest in environmental movements and thinking, I, based on close reading of much of communication between sheep husbandry and wild...

John Derrida is considered one of the chief architects of postmodernist worldview. We are living, willy-nilly, in the postmodern age. And one of the chief characteristics of this is incredulity toward ideologies, especially those ideologies that make big claims. Deconstruction that Derrida advocated consists in taking nothing on face value, in noticing the gaps and absences and contradictions in the terms in which an argument or claim is made. It teaches us valuing difference and suspecting totalitarianism, fundamentalism and all such discourses that speak in the name of God/Truth/Future/Utopia/ Justice. Derrida said that Justice can never be done in absolute terms and all one can do is to approximate it and ruthlessly questions all judgments, all claims of justice from authorities. Deconstruction deconstructs all constructions imposed on people through sheer power or force or propaganda. We need the language, if not the methodology, of deconstruction to present truth to power, to sh...

Questions that our posterity will ask Posterity and in fact the current generation will ask us few difficult questions. As parents I don’t think we have any answers. A few questions and issues they will raise I discuss today. What we have made of Human Resource Management in Kashmir? Once it was not a big problem. Take the case of log winters, handicrafts and extensive local manufacturing of important woolen, matting and other commodities in most houses. Neither women nor the elderly people were jobless. Today even our youth are unemployed. And most of the jobs are in sectors that are not really productive or contributing in real sense to solving local problems. Previously it was almost all green. Just take the example of constructing house. A few decades back it cost almost nothing. Only certain patience. In the first year bricks were prepared. In the next year other requirements were gradually completed. Then labour was mostly either free or community based. Hardly anyone was hir...

“Each of us is guilty before everyone for everyone, and I more than the others,” writes Dostoevsky in  The Brothers Karamazov . This statement expresses the quintessence of traditional ethics as developed by mystics and in modern times by Dostovesky and Levinas. Sufi ethics is an elaboration of this theme. This great idea of answerability or responsibility is a response to Ivan, the famous character in the same novel who says: “If there is no God, all is permitted.” In Kashmir we behave as if there is no God and all is permitted and none is guilty. Let us analyze the question of responsibility in the particular case of scenario of water bodies in Kashmir. Our water bodies are fast becoming history. Most of the springs are gone. The Dal is politicized to death. Anchaar story is getting repeated in the Wular as it is dying a silent spectacular death. Glaciers are melting. Pure water in streams or rivers is becoming a fiction. We have to pay for water bottle and business of water pu...

In the light of Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge Tourism can be a scandal. It can lead to destruction of not only land but cultures and sacred traditions It can ultimately create, rather than cure unemployment. It can, especially when unregulated, open up Pandora's box that are not foreseen by planners. This is one of many other important theses of the greatest book written on Ladakh ( Is it not ironic that one of our tourism ministers has been from Ladakh in the past? The sordid side of tourism – in the name of development we can turn sanctuaries of spirit into deserts where even devils would not dare to tread – is not kept in consideration.) The book, that every Kashmiri who is concerned with development discourse, tourism and identity of pir-waer should read, argues quite lucidly and brilliantly many theses that almost all of us would intuitively consent to. . It also argues the importance of Ladakh culture for the world that has severed ties with tradition.  Fir...

There is neither any knowledge divorced from power relations, nor possibility of either peace or sustainable development in a unipolar world may not be governed by the immoral ecocidal logic of corporate globalization. There is piling information overload and lack of real discernment or knowledge in the age aptly called the Age of Information. The age valorizes surfaces and has little use for depths, essences, reality behind appearances and truth behind illusions. Postmodernism is content with illusions and is committed to the “ontology of singular events.” Knowledge of reality is denied to most people in an age that puts onus on utilitarian or pragmatic consideration and maintains subtle control on media. The true story of exploiting financial structures, of neocolonialist banking masquerading as aids/loans, of dissolution of gold standard, of inflation, of recessions, of remote controlled speculative businesses of markets especially stock markets, imposed myths of national interest...

Once upon a time we were people, a community. Today we are individuals. Once we were not wasting a grain. Today not wasting food means that you are not a good consumer. Once we ate meat occasionally but were healthy as were our sub-alpine pastures. Today, we are great consumers of protein and calories but are not healthy. Once almost everything used in construction industry was obtained from local materials, waste products or byproducts. Today we are replacing almost every local material with imported one. Once we used to employ local committees to manage most of our local resources, and today we are competing with one another in destroying them. Once it was unacceptable to more conscious Pir families to buy land. Today they have amassed huge land property. Once we didn’t keep repeating an posh’ teli yeli wan posh’ but preserved forests, and today we outcompete fast developing economies in deforestation drives. Once most medicines were locally available and local hakeems effect...