Kashmir Valley settles for new normal amidst long shutdown

AzharQadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 25

When the clock strikes 8.30 am, it is time to shut shops in one ofSrinagar’s largest neighbourhoods of Bemina. The shutters are lowered and vendors selling vegetables retreat into lanes.

The situation is similar in nearly all neighbourhoods of Srinagar cityas the Kashmir valley has settled for its new normal of spontaneous daytime shutdowns. The shutdown of businesses and markets has continued for the past three weeks even as the administration eased restrictions in most parts of the city.

For the last one week since the state government eased restrictions that were imposed on August 5 amid apprehensions of large-scale protests against the abrogation of Article 370, Kashmir has spontaneously shut down.

“People are not in a mood to resume normal business. Most shops open early morning and shut at 8.30 am,” Danish Ahmad, a general storekeeper in Bemina, said. The early morning shopping hours had remained in vogue in Kashmir when the region was paralysed by agitations 2010 and 2016.

The administration’s efforts to bring a sense of normalcy by opening government offices and primary and middle level schools have so far gained little success as schools saw nil to thin attendance of students.

The ongoing closure of markets, including key commercial neighbourhoods of Lal Chowk and Karan Nagar, shopping malls and public transport, is one of the longest spells of spontaneous shutdown as communication blockade and detentions have kept separatist leaders out of circulation.

In Rajbagh, an uptown neighbourhood near the commercial nerve centre of Lal Chowk, which has remained reluctant in observing past shutdowns, a departmental store owner said he makes sure he downs shutters at 9 am. He said the sense of loss, this time, was overwhelming.

“In 2016, when Burhan Wani was killed, we observed a shutdown for nearly six months even though there was no real purpose for it. That time, it was simply a sense of mourning but this time, there is hopelessness,” he said, adding the shutdown this time will be long.

Another shopkeeper in the city’s central Jehangir Chowk said there was a point of return in 2016 when Wani’s killing had led to a wave of protests across Kashmir. “This time, we are not able to find any point of return,” he said.

Thin attendance

The administration’s efforts to bring a sense of normalcy by opening government offices and primary and middle-level schools have so far gained little success as schools saw nil to thin attendance of students.