ThePrint | Poonch incident should encourage military justice review. Bring one law for three Services

The frequency of terrorist violence in the Rajouri-Poonch districts in the Jammu division of Jammu & Kashmir has remained a cause for concern for over two years. This is in contrast to the decline of terrorism in the Kashmir valley during the same period. A combination of mountainous terrain, jungles and contiguity with the Line of Control makes the area suitable for hit and run attacks. Pakistan’s hand is obvious and the time period also overlaps with the thinning out of the Rashtriya Rifles, a counter-terrorism force, post China’s aggressive manoeuvres in Ladakh in 2020. Read the full article here.

Only dialogue, not Army, can stop targeting of Kashmiri Pandits. But make J&K a state first

The targeting of Kashmiri Pandits in the last few weeks would not seem to be part of the campaign against ‘outsiders’. But in reality, it is connected to it. The aim is not only to stall the ongoing measures for the resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits and land restoration but also to portray the inability of the Indian government to protect them. Such portrayal operates to debunk the notion of ‘normality’ and serves to increase the numbers of ‘outsiders’ in terms of the Armed Police Forces that may be expected to fuel alienation by their sheer presence if not by their actions undertaken to curb violence.

What 300 Days of Internet Winter in Kashmir Tell Us About Erecting a Digital Wall

This is an extract from the full article published on The Wire.....What is the cost of this protracted disruption?There is no shortage of real-life stories about the economic impact this prolonged Internet disruption has had in the union territory. Media reports are replete with such examples.Given that we are still in the midst of these events, an academic exercise to estimate the economic costs has not been published.Still, using available numbers regarding internet subscribers (38% from TRAI for the service area of Jammu and Kashmir) and a rough estimate of time connected drawn out from reports on patterns of internet usage by people in India (different sources peg the ‘active consumption’ time between 90 minutes and 150 minutes. Let’s use the higher end of that range. Note that there is no measure of passive consumption impacted), it is possible to arrive at a back-of-the-envelope ‘estimate’ of how many hours of Internet access have potentially been disrupted since August 4, 2019.

Between August 4 and January 14, when there was a complete shutdown, this number amounted to ~1.9 billion hours. In the period from January 14 to March 4, when there was whitelisted access another ~600 million hours were added. And the 87 days between then and May 30, will have accounted for another ~1 billion hours. That adds up to around 3.5 billion hours of disrupted internet access for approximately 12.25 million people. Let that sink in.