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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: May 20, 2017, 08:58 AM IST
With the Dal Lake in the backdrop, the GST Council meeting kicked off on Thursday this week in Srinagar. The council approved the rates for over a thousand products, a majority of which fall in the 12 to 18 per cent tax range.
While the finalisation of these tax rates is a strong signal that the BJP government has been steadfast in the implementation of its ground-breaking tax reform, another signal that we shouldn’t lose sight of is the location and timing of the council meeting: in Srinagar and in the aftermath of the brutal and inhumane murder of Lt Ummer Fayaz by terrorists in the Valley. Indubitably, the assassination of the army officer was a threat issued, in cold blood, to the residents of the Valley that they better not engage with the Indian government, and if they choose to do so, they do it at peril to life and limb.
The army, in its numerous addresses to the media, has clearly indicated that the militants will be paid back in the same coin. That is necessary — and even salutary — to keep up the morale of the soldier. But what about the civilian, and what of his belief in the Indian state? By holding the GST Council meet in Srinagar, the government has assured the common citizen that Kashmir is an integral part of India and that the residents of Kashmir, in no measure, should feel alienated or distanced by the Indian mainland.
Reportedly, J&K Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu has said that by holding the GST meet in Srinagar, India has made the state an unerasable part of economic history. Definitely, history will record Srinagar as the place where a consensus on rates was arrived at but more importantly as a place where the GST reform took strident steps towards becoming operational.
To be fair, one does not expect to see an overnight change in the political and geo-strategic narrative of the state — expecting so will be naive and dismissive of the complex, layered dynamic of civilian and military strife in the state. However, the GST meet as an integration effort is a start which should be reciprocated by an equally complimentary initiative by CM Mehbooba Mufti. Without that, the GST meeting risks being an empty gesture.
