India's financial and entertainment capital got a first-hand account of the goings-on in the distant and often restive state of Jammu and Kashmir from its young and articulate Chief Minister Omar Abdullah: from how it can be a scary job to run the state to his run-in with the Army over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and his light-hearted advice to Rahul Gandhi that he will probably learn more if he loses an election like Abdullah did.
While militant violence has fallen sharply in the last decade and the state has conducted a hugely successful panchayat election for the first time in 30 years, India should give up the idea of getting Pakistan-occupied Kashmir back, Abdullah said. He also urged the Centre to show more spine when dealing with China since Beijing calls Kashmir a disputed region and questions parts of India’s sovereignty.
“If I go to sleep at night in the same frame of mind I woke up in, I think it’s a day I can be fairly satisfied with. I have had more days like that this year than I had last year,” Abdullah said on Saturday at the Olive Bar and Kitchen in Mumbai. He was speaking at the Express Adda, a series of conversations that The Indian Express Group organises with people at the centre of change.
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