 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we will be talking about the situation in Kashmir and to talk to us about in detail we are being joined by Prabhupur Kayaasta who is the editor of NewsClick and the president of Free Software Movement in India. Also we are being joined by Gautam who is a long time civil liberties activist. Gautam I will start with you first. 36 ministers are supposed to go to Jammu in Kashmir to do an assessment of what's happening in this region and talk to the people about government's policies and create an interaction in that space. What does this mean? It's very interesting because out of the 36 ministers, only 5 ministers visit Kashmir. Out of 59 odd places that they are supposed to visit, only 8 are in Kashmir, 51 are in Jammu. So obviously if this is an attempt at reaching out to the people, it's primarily targeted at the Jammu people compared to Kashmir. The idea is of course the government feels that there all the good initiatives and policies that they have taken are not filtering down because they locked down everything. There is no free flow of information or news to anyone. People don't know what is happening except for what they hear through word of mouth. So in such a situation, if the government feels that they're you know people are not getting to know the good things that are going to come out from their policies and so-called development plans, then it becomes necessary for them to go directly to reach out to people which actually is an also an admission of failure on the part or the imbecility of the government to have introduced a complete lockdown in Kashmir which denied not just information, news or their the freedoms to express themselves, but have actually turned them into virtual captives. Now to go there to meet captives and to persuade them sounds extremely I mean to my ears it sounds very insidious and sinister. I don't get any good feeling or vibes out of this thing. Jammu and Ladakh were two areas where people came out in support of abrogation of Article 370, but the situation has turned. People have begun to express their deep apprehension about what is in store for them because they're losing the control over land and job opportunities which people fear. They'll have to be competing with outsiders. They fear loss of power, diminution in the status of a state from special status to a union territory which is virtually a colony because they won't have control over two key elements. One is police, the other is land. The Jammu Chamber of Commerce has come out and complained that by making by removing octroy what they have done is destroyed livelihood of three to four lakh people, robbed them of the jobs because the local industries have to shut down now because that octroy protection which they enjoyed which enabled them to produce for a market in Jammu and Kashmir is no longer available because they'll be competing with outsiders supplying goods to the local people. So what happens to jobs and industries? So if government is on the one hand talking about bringing development and industrialization to Jammu and Kashmir, on the other hand actually the existing industries are going to close down. They're virtually closed, 95% of them are closed in Kashmir and about 30% of industrial units stand closed. It's a staggering economic crisis also that Jammu and Kashmir has been faced with now. In fact, Rabi that brings me to the next question. The entire internet lockdown that has taken place it's been 165 days and the kind of suffocation that has been put that has been thrusted upon the people in Jammu and Kashmir is one of the kind. I mean there are protests but nobody can hear of it. They want to access information they cannot and Supreme Court has talked about lifting the ban and calling it the very basic fundamental right. How do you read this? I think internet is something that we have to worry about today because it is not just a means of communication. It's also means to express ourselves. So this is what Supreme Court has said that this is also about freedom of speech which is as you know under section 19 article 19 of the Constitution is something that is guaranteed to the citizens subject to reasonable restrictions and Supreme Court itself has said in the same judgment on Kashmir that these restrictions do not appear to be reasonable and the government should review that. But having said that they did not go any further and they in fact said the government should review and the court didn't give any further relief and neither has it kept the petition pending waiting for the government to review and give them a report. So in some sense you have conceded the substance of the argument on what that the internet is a fundamental right today but at the same time you have not done anything to make people avail of that right and unfortunately this is the problem with the courts these days to say the right things but do not fall off with the resubstantive delivery in terms of justice. But having said that let's look at some of the other issues that happened. You know it's not only a question of freedom of speech it is also the question that today you need a job how do you apply a lot of it is over the internet you will need an admission outside Jammu or outside Kashmir you need to go and apply through the internet the government sets a whole bunch of its schemes are delivered through the internet and also if you want to verify a simple thing like your adhan it is also needs the internet if you want rations again you need to verify yourself. So the whole bunch of welfare measures which is what is supposed to be enabled by the internet this was also the previous government also these governments claim that they are going to make everything available online. Now if you take away that online itself and say it's only available if you come to specific centers which can be 50 miles 30 miles 20 miles from where you are communication is one thing but even physical transport physical going and coming and going is difficult again the all kinds of restrictions what you are making is on one hand you claim that everything should be online and you will make everything including education available online including applying and so on at the same time you say internet is really a luxury and we can take it away when we want because it's not necessary. So there is a contradiction here in both these issues what you are promising the citizen and what you say is not necessary for the citizen I think this is something the courts unfortunately while having accepted as a fundamental right has really let me say failed in giving justice to the people because they have made good pronouncements but have had no delivery. Can I pose a question because this requires clarity and for most viewers who would not understand can you explain Praveer when the government says that they are going to start resume mobile internet but 2G service what are the implications second when they say that they are going to start broadband services but only for essential or basic you know items like health I mean hospitals banks and government institutions what does it mean see we know today that 80 to 85 percent of the connectivity today is to the cell phone so effectively when you are talking about internet you are not talking of the wired services you really talking as far as the people are concerned to mobile so it's also interesting to see that this what we're talking about opening the mobile services internet services only is about again Jammu okay so it's about five districts and these are Hindu dominated districts yeah let us put that that issue aside for the time being I think we all of us know the implication of Jammu and the valley but having said that it is about Jammu and obviously Jammu and Kashmir are being treated differently and that we know from the beginning in Jammu again the city had access to mobile services for some time 2G services for some time now it's extended to five districts again 2G is a very slow service so effectively anything to do with visuals images etc doesn't work on that most of the time you will see today you will get timed out if you try to upload a form for instance so effectively it's a crippled service as it were that you're offering no it's a it's a legacy service if you will and because of the slow speed of connection most people will not use it second part of it is that you will find the social media is still out of bounds so effectively you can communicate with government services if you want something registering for something applying for something but my whole experience has been that the government services the websites are also extremely slow and therefore if you are looking to access the 2G services you'll probably get timed out before you have done anything except look at one page so effectively all these services the government gives I don't think work on 2G but you know something my issue is I want hospitals I want to reach something I want to say register as a patient for an appointment tomorrow all this today takes place a lot of it today takes place on the internet and how do you do all of that if you want to apply as a student would you try even on an internet good connections you're not able to log in very easily to those kind of forms apply online and so on there's no chance that you will be able to do it in 2G and anyway Kashmir still lies that only fixed places you can go and you can only see fixed things you know that means you can only see certain kind of things but not others but the whole the other part which I didn't answer actually I should have how many livelihoods today depend on the internet what happens to Uber drivers and Ola drivers what happens to all those who deliver various services to us the entire IT based service company is units in Kashmir have closed down because it's nothing but I'm also saying that the whole informal economy which is based likes from swiggy food delivery to your rides hailing of rides a whole bunch of other things today really life is completely affected all of that is affected and then of course you have all other problems communication which I'm not going into I'm really talking about internet not just as a right to avail of information right to speak it's also about delivery of services essential services and it's also about people's livelihoods which depend on providing internet based services all of that is collapsed Neil I'd like to add something and for the media internet is vital it's very important I mean work suffers if you don't have access to internet and imagine if this is denied to the media and Kashmir so you can tom-tom and claim that everything is hankidori and our army chiefs can come out and give their political opinion calling it historic step and things like that the reality on the ground is very different but Gautam it is the historic step historically very bad yes okay so let's not talk not not let's not quibble about doing historic but the point about media you made that is a very important one you see today media can avail of internet if it goes to say places like press club how many place press clubs are there so only available say in Srinagar how many other places can be media people then access information can you write about things without accessing information in today's world you can't you know so those are the kind of issues that also come up that delivery and here the Supreme Court did make the right pronouncement that information is a right and communication is a part related to freedom of speech so but as I said unfortunately the right exists you know during emergency and I have to bring it down to this that it was said by the Rende yes who's attorney general yes you have the freedom of life you have a right to life but it cannot be exercised during emergency so you have the fundamental rights they are not suspended but you can't exercise them so Supreme Court is again reiterated freedom of speech is a right and it has to be there but it has not ensured that it be exercised that is the problem we have okay I like to add something while we are talking about all both has happened in the last five minutes I think we should keep reminding ourselves the saddest part I feel as a civil liberties activist also is a total lack of concern that that we seem to be showing for those who have been picked up arrested detained and I am talking primarily about those those who have been picked up incarcerated in Kashmir are being treated one way but there is a whole body of people more than 600 who are rotting in Indian jails outside Jamun Kashmir and they face all kind of obstacles their families and they're still there and there's not a voice there is not a judiciary which is talked about their rights so I mean what kind of civil liberties and what kind of democracy do we have where you're not even concerned I mean the normal rules of law that should apply where families can visit their detainees without any problems or hindrance to meeting the lawyers to getting their bail applications heard to etc etc everything seems to have been denied to them this is the worst part I feel so we can talk about everything else but we have to also bring in the fact that so many people and so many kids suffered at the hands of Indian security forces and the police in particular after august 5th and there has been no I mean it's as if we can do anything with the children which is to come in the next generation so we can talk about citizenship the army chief can talk about the constitution and preamble what what happens to people on the ground thank you Gautam thank you Prabir we live in a democracy with an entire state that is captive