A glossy hoarding board that advertises for Airtel, India's fastest-growing telecom company, currently sits atop Srinagar's Central Telegraph Office, in the busy commercial hub of Lal Chowk. To a great extent, it symbolises the paradox of change in Jammu & Kashmir. On 31 July 1988, Kashmiri militants bombed the Central Telegraph Office (CTO), heralding the start of armed resistance against the Indian military presence in J & K. Nearly everyone still traces the insurgency's start to what is popularly known as the targhar, or telegraph, office blast. Today, despite a nearly four-year-old bonhomie between India and Pakistan, the CTO complex remains heavily guarded, its security precautions engulfing most of the road area.
The central targhar today houses the government telecommunications company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). In 2003, state police officers resorted to force to quell a frenzied crowd of mobile-phone-seekers near the CTO, after New Delhi belatedly allowed cellular service to start up in the state. Then- Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed termed the launch the "beginning of peaceful days". Today, BSNL subscribers can be seen queuing up at the CTO building to pay their phone bills, and the combined revenue of BSNL and Airtel in J & K has grown from INR 600 million in 2003 to around INR 2 billion. Nonetheless, a vast spread of sandbags and barbed-wire coils remains around the CTO, and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officers continue to point their automatic rifles at passers-by.
Such security measures can be seen dotting the length and breadth of the Kashmir Valley, as well as parts of Jammu, including Doda, Rajouri and Poonch. The latest attempt by the Indian Home Ministry to set up review panels to figure out how to trim the security presence in the area has not yielded results. Indeed, little has changed since a European Union delegation in 2004 memorably noted that "Kashmir is a beautiful prison." Around 600,000 troops currently guard this prison. In addition there is the state's own 65,000-strong police force and 25,000 of what are known as 'special police officers', who are generally taken from the ranks of former militants. There are also an estimated 3000-5000 pro-government, army-protected gunmen, officially known as 'friendly militants', as well as around 5000 gunmen engaged in various government-sponsored village defence committees.
Lieutenant General A S Sekhon commands the Indian Army's 15 Corps, the largest counter-insurgency force in Kashmir. On 29 March of this year, Lt Gen Sekhon, although publicly pessimistic about Islamabad's commitment to dismantle the militant infrastructure it supports, stated in Srinagar that infiltration from across the 740-km by 35-km Line of Control had effectively reached zero. But such statements have been made time and again over the years, and today checkposts as massively guarded as the Lal Chowk CTO are found throughout and deeply impact daily life throughout India-administered Kashmir (heretofore referred to as 'Kashmir', unless otherwise required). For instance, local legislators recently estimated that close to 80,000 students in the Kashmir Valley have to pass through heavy security barricades every day on their ways to and from school.