Opinion | Five Years in Office. A Territory Transformed

Five years ago, Jammu & Kashmir stood on the edge—paralysed by uncertainty, locked in cycles of disruption, and starved of governance that meant anything beyond survival. The streets were not spaces of movement, but theatres of provocation. The classroom was not a place of learning, but of absence. The mindspace of the average Kashmiri was occupied by dread, not dreams.
That era is over. And its end is not a matter of opinion—it is an outcome. A deliberate, designed outcome of administrative courage and strategic will.

Under the stewardship of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, Jammu & Kashmir has moved beyond press releases, beyond political wordplay, and beyond the performative rituals of broken democracies. What we are witnessing is not a veneer of progress—it is a rupture with the past.

Five years is not a ceremonial milestone. It is a test of political clarity, administrative resolve, and moral purpose. In Jammu & Kashmir, the last five years have not been a continuation of routines—they have been a rupture. The rupture was necessary. For decades, the region was caught in a cycle of paralysis—where governance existed only as a rumour, and peace was either imposed from the barrel or bartered away through silence. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, that cycle has been broken—not with slogans or symbolism, but with structure.
This was not a terrain short of potential. It was a terrain suffocated by compromise. For too long, the people were forced to live between shutdowns and shootouts. Between uncertainty at dawn and grief at dusk. The street belonged not to citizens, but to orchestrators of chaos. Schools opened to empty benches. Shops downed shutters on command. Life itself was rationed, negotiated, and often aborted. That old order no longer holds.
Today, the transformation is not cosmetic. It is constitutional, administrative, and psychological. The change did not arrive on the back of agreements. It arrived through decisions. Harsh ones. Unpopular ones. But necessary. The first outcome of this clarity was control. The state reclaimed its presence—on the streets, in institutions, and inside the minds of those who believed governance was a farce. Now, the street no longer bristles with threat. The classroom no longer sits abandoned. The air is no longer thick with uncertainty. Peace is not a sentiment here—it is a structure, and it is enforced.

Parents in Kashmir once lived with a constant, aching dread. The dread of that one phone call. The knock that came without warning. The long night after a child didn’t return. That dread is now losing its grip. Not because time has healed anything. But because the architecture of fear has been pulled down, brick by brick. And in its place, something firmer has been erected—order.
Tourism is not a seasonal blip anymore. It’s not a statistical illusion. It is a reflection of restored confidence. Visitors are not fleeing to the airport at the first rumour. They are staying, returning, and spreading the word that Kashmir is no longer a red zone. The G20 meet in Srinagar was not a showpiece event—it was a clear, blunt message to the world: Kashmir is no longer to be viewed through the prism of pity or panic. It is open, operational, and outward-looking.

Development has finally become tactile. Roads are no longer drawings on files. Tunnels are no longer press statements. Remote areas are being stitched back into the geography of governance. For the first time, the idea that ‘nothing works here’ is not just being challenged—it’s being dismantled.

The administration has stopped waiting for ideal conditions. It has started working in real ones.
Culture, too, has returned—not in galleries or curated exhibitions, but in the lived rhythms of the people. For years, conflict had muffled the arts, silenced poetry, and erased memory. Today, festivals are back. Music is back. Memory is being restored. This is not a tourist brochure—it is a society remembering itself.

The youth, long manipulated as instruments of disruption, are now being channelled into purpose. Sports grounds are not empty. Competitions are happening. Skill-building is visible. It is no longer romantic to rage. The street is no longer a stage for spectacle. It is being taken back by the people—not in protest, but in presence.

Justice, for once, has stopped behaving like a ritual. Victims are not just entries in an FIR register. Cases are moving. Closure is being offered. The slogans that once shielded the guilty have lost their currency. The law, while not perfect, has stopped being passive. It is moving, and its movement is being felt.

This five-year journey is not about image correction. It is about institutional correction. It is not about winning applause—it is about restoring function. The idea that Kashmir needed a special set of rules, that governance here required deals and indulgences—that myth has collapsed. What has taken its place is a form of leadership that does not flinch, does not perform, and does not retreat.

Call it resolve. Call it political realism. But don’t call it temporary. This is not a phase—it is a reset. A reset powered not just by government orders, but by a quiet public consent. Kashmir has not changed because someone in Delhi demanded it. It has changed because its people were exhausted. Exhausted by being made pawns. Tired of being told who they are, what they must resist, and when they must burn.

That fatigue has found a direction. That direction has found a leadership. And that leadership, in turn, has delivered the one thing the region was always denied—not security alone, but stability. Not silence, but structure. Not appeasement, but action. Kashmir, for once, is not a waiting room for the next disaster. It is a place working to build a tomorrow with its feet on the ground.

This is not a celebration. It is a reckoning. A reckoning with the past, and a refusal to return to it.

(Author is Human Rights Activist and Founder and Chairman of “Save Youth Save Future” Foundation Can be reached on wajahatfarooqbhat.sysf.org@gmail.com)