Is the problem of Kashmir merely one of guns and guards or also one of hearts and minds? Unfortunately, neither the Central and state governments nor the Indian media have paid adequate attention to the latter dimension. C Subramaniam, the former finance minister, has pointed out to the growing educated unemployment in the state which is feeding the militancy. Even if training facilities and jobs can’t be found in adequate numbers inside the state, there is no reason, he argues, why efforts cannot be made to find them opportunities in other parts of the country. Like many others, he too advocates the promotion of a new economy based on information technology. In addition, efforts to improve the state’s agriculture and horticulture can have a major impact on the rural poor.

As we work in the field of environment, we would like to discuss opportunities offered by natural resource enterprises. The poor of the Kashmir Valley are already developing such opportunities. The environment magazine Down to Earth recently published a fascinating report on how the Kashmir Valley’s poor, affected by the decline of the tourist industry because of militancy, are today using the Dal Lake for their survival. The Kashmir Valley has extremely limited land and, therefore, to eke out a survival, the tourism-affected are cultivating the waters, we repeat, the waters of the Dal Lake, in what is nothing short of technological brilliance. Of course, environmentalists don’t like it and nor do political leaders, including Farooq Abdullah, influenced by unthinking environmental hype. Indeed, the cultivation is not good for the lake but nobody has a serious answer to resolve the contradictory social, economic and ecological considerations.

It is in this context that the recent debate on the shahtoosh gets our gall. And Abdullah’s cave-in to conservationists to ban the shahtoosh shawl is indeed appalling because it shows not just ecological mindlessness but also political mindlessness. A deadly cocktail indeed for the poor Kashmiris. Not surprisingly, shahtoosh traders and now Mustafa Kamaal, state industries and commerce minister, have protested against the government’s position. According to newspaper reports, a shahtoosh shawl is highly prized in the West and fetches as much as US$3,000 to US$15,000. The total foreign exchange earned is said to be around Rs. 200 crore a year. In India, it commands prices ranging from Rs 30,000 to Rs. one lakh. Some 50,000 families face the prospects of starvation because of the ban. Given these figures, the J&K government should do everything to promote and protect its shahtoosh enterprise.

Environmental arguments that the population of the chiru (Tibetan antelope) has dropped from one million about 50 years ago to about 65,000 now and that about 20,000 are killed every year for the shahtoosh trade, are only relevant to the extent that the wild population should now be protected. It does not automatically mean that the shahtoosh trade should be banned. Given that shahtoosh making requires only the fibre of the chiru goat, there is no reason even to kill the animal. Maybe it is being killed today because the goat is first collected in the wild. Why can’t the vast Changthang pasture, where the goat is found, not be used to farm these goats in such numbers that these highly coveted shawls actually become a mass commodity instead of just remaining an elite possession – a trade that employs not just 50,000 families but 500,000 and earns Rs. 2,000 crore instead of Rs. 200 crore.

If Indian conservationists were not so anti-poor and enterprise-illiterate they would have tried to learn a lesson or two from the French and Swiss Alps, both of which were in a highly degraded state at the start of the 20^th century because of overgrazing and mismanagement. Today, on the other hand, these alpine pastures have returned to their full glory – not because of bans on cattle but because of a rip-roaring, cooperative dairy industry that commands the attention of the whole world. Dairy farmers organised themselves to use the pastures in an ecologically-sound manner, cooperatives have been formed to ensure that even the poorest farmer gets a good economic return, and local products have been protected so that nobody can sell French and Swiss brands of cheese or chocolate anywhere in the world. This approach has also paid rich tourism dividends. The resulting rich patchwork tapestry of forests and pastures in the upper alpine region looks so beautiful today that it is considered a valuable ecological possession by the French and the Swiss – and, of course, something where all our hip-swinging Bollywood stars love to prance around, wasting Indian foreign exchange.

Forestry is one another area where clearly a huge amount of employment and wealth can be created. Like good environmentalists, Kashmiris use a lot of wood to make their houses. In addition, firewood is the primary fuel used for cooking and heating even in towns. Srinagar alone consumes some 50,000 tonnes of firewood every year. Therefore, there is a big domestic demand for wood apart from one outside the state. On the other hand, of the 2.04 million hectares of forests that were recorded by remote sensing satellites in 1993-95, about 46 per cent was degraded open forest and another 15 per cent were highly degraded forest scrub lands. Clearly, a community forest management programme of the kind in operation in Nepal is needed to regenerate these forests – a Nepalese style programme because it gives all the timber resources generated to the villagers whereas the niggardly Indian government gives only 25 per cent under its Joint Forest Management programme, except of course in the Naxalite-dominated tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh where foresters dare not take anything from the tribals.