Covi-litics; Kashmir

Jammu and Kashmir daily reports 500+ Corona Virus cases. The overall tally has surpassed 25,000 mark. According to the daily Media Bulletin on novel Corona Virus (Covid-19), out of 28740 positive cases, 20943 have recoverded so far and 542 people have died. However, the level of chaos put up, cannot be summed up into satitistics. Apparently the health personnel are working diligently to give a tough fight to the mighty virus.
Seemingly, Covid-19 occurs to the valley much more than a pandemic. Kashmir has always been synonymous to conspiracy. It has always been a political gimmick for the centre. Amid the chaotic pandemic, the Indian politics has yet again rendered Kashmiris speechless. People have been played, as always, by the administration. The early green signal for the Yatra amid lockdown in the valley ( eventually called off after criticism by Health systems), an apparent safe passage for the tourists in the valley but tightening the earth around locals is highly suggestive of something stupefying to be served by the administrative belts. People are triggered and the repercussions of the selectively dicey politics are prominent. The deceit of decades has yet again being nourished by creating space for skeptical unrest under the shadow of battling Covid-19 . Those feasting their eyes on the helplessness of a common Kashmiri yet again came up with dicey politics, harnessing the pre-existing chaos among the people.
The selective lockdown comes to the common public nothing less than a curfew of subjugation. People find it hard to find their good in the lockdown and percieve the lockdown as an insincere curfew. People tend to believe a blind bot than a regime that feasts her eyes on the plight of a Kashmiri. An average Kashmiri perceives Covid-19 much of a political game. This political game of sceptics is so compelling that he turns blind to the abruptly increasing tally of COVID-19 cases. However, this callous attitude of people towards the pandemic is an outcome of the policies of the regime. Being a fellow Kashmiri, the sense of being played at the hands of the regime is not alien. This sense always prevails, even in the apparent favors of the regime. The recently issued orders of baring the hospitals from sharing the COVID-19 data with the media has further densified the already prevailing air of skeptics. This aura of iffy is a seed that continues to flourish since 70 years now and has settled in the minds of the people as a universal fact.
Since day one of the pandemic, the valley has been an oven of cooking rumors that are taken no less than truth. The whirls of “fake positives” “fraud statistics” “communal lockdown” have been in the air for long. The newly baked rumour has it that the coffin-boxes provided for the burial of the COVID-19 deaths are empty and are buried as such with actual bodies being dissected and all the vital organs taken out. One sane mind may discard the rumor as soon as it is fed to him, but for an already vulnerable Koshur, it tends to appear more of a true story than a baseless rumor. This apparently silly-attitude is a product of decades of deceit that has eaten up the valley.
The insights of sceptics gained milestones, when the alleged fake encounter in Shopian came into light. Family members of three labourers from Rajouri in Jammu who went missing in the Shopian district of Kashmir last month alleged, on the basis of photographs, that the three unidentifed militants the army said it killed in a gunfight there on July 18, were in fact their innocent relatives. In the light of the Covid-19, the bodies of the alleged labourers were burried in a jiffy. This alleged theft of blood was the stepping stone for the bigger dissent.
A slight increase lately in the Posthumously tested positive cases has further paved way for sceptics. The voices of dissent widely reckon such cases as hoax. The prominence of dissent was evident from the reports of assault on the resident doctors in SMHS Srinagar. The helplessness from the either sides is appalling. The regime has not stopped toying the common youth of the valley. There is no clear pattern as to what a common man should see through.