The year 2025 will be recalled as the year of the murder of innocents in the meadows; the April 22 gruesome terrorist attack in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam. But it will be remembered for integrating the Kashmir Valley with the rest of India. The mass transportation link established being the single biggest transformative force ever unleashed on Kashmir. The rail links and freight trains from Budgam to Delhi will far outweigh all other integrative measures, including constitutional ones of 2019. The tracks crisscrossing the Valley represent the crossroads of transformation: integrating society, homogenizing culture and opening the economy. In 2025, remoteness of Kashmir was replaced by proximity to the mainland. The long-held notion that “across the tunnel” lies another world has changed for good.
So too the political belief that electoral victory begets political power and confers democratic legitimacy and the authority to govern. The year 2025 was a master class in Machiavellian realpolitik: how to reduce an electoral majority to a governance minority. Right through the year, democratic empowerment was disenfranchised by ensuring that a representative majority government does not have the final say.
The National Conference-led government under Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, formed after the 2024 assembly elections, the first since 2014, grappled with constrained powers and stifling elbowroom limiting operational and administrative autonomy. The year brought to the fore a chilling reality: Kashmiris, the demographic majority, may still have the electoral might. But being a political minority now, their votes lack the institutional weight to deliver the electoral promises and legislative pledges made by the elected representatives, be it the ministers or the MLAs.
For the union government the core issues of statehood restoration, a key electoral promise of the elected government (as also of all other national and regional parties), was not even on the agenda let alone be under any serious discussion. This left the elected government facing the daunting task of balancing public expectations with the realities of limited autonomy. In 2025, they failed, and how.
Adding injury to insult were the flip-flops of Omar Abdullah led government on issues like reservations, smart meter or reclaiming of unauthorized structures. This eroded the trust in the relevance of institution of elected representatives in J&K. Nothing new, in a sense as that has been the case through the 1950s, 60s and 70s. It highlighted the perennial challenge of navigating Delhi’s overarching framework while seeking to fulfill local aspirations.
By late 2025, public discourse shifted from disappointment to disillusionment to disenchantment with the diarchic system that is in place. As frustrations mounted over unfulfilled pledges, and perceived compromises, the demands for fairness and equity in the developmental gains became bolder. The year gone by saw a rise in the palpable public disaffection for the party in power. The mood, for sure, at least in the Valley, is one of despondence if not downright hopelessness.
Having come to power by the optimism of will of the people of Kashmir valley (and Pir Panchal), the elected government was paralyzed by — to use a phrase of the celebrated Italian Marxist Gramsci — by the pessimism of the intellect. Hence a complete disconnect between electors and the elected; people and the government; party and its cadres. The year encapsulates a dialectical approach to struggle: a cold, realistic assessment of structural barriers.
One of the major risks that crystallized during the year was an India-Pakistan military confrontation involving missile strikes, drone engagements, and artillery exchanges along the Line of Control, the military action reflected a doctrinal shift on counter terrorism by India, treating major terrorist attacks as triggers for conventional retaliation without needing to prove Pakistan’s state complicity. This approach bypassed the Kashmir issue’s complexities, focusing instead on dismantling terror networks. For the first time a Kashmir-specific confrontation was framed in such a way that avoided reopening the debate on Kashmir’s political status. Yet it strained cross-border dynamics, and perceptions of stability. Within the Valley, it reinforced a security-first paradigm: intensified counterinsurgency operations, detentions, and restrictions that curtailed civil liberties and economic mobility.
The Kashmir Valley’s development trajectory continued to be constrained by the centralized command framework post the dismantling of the state structure with semi-autonomous decision-making powers. More importantly, the constricting centralized setup is widely perceived, for good reason, as a discriminatory regime. The split mandate between Jammu and the Valley, evident in electoral outcomes, deepened regional fissures, reminding us that Jammu and Kashmir remain two entities bound by history but divided by priorities. The regional and religious divide was complete in 2025.
This Pahalgam assault exposed the persistent insecurity, undermining economic revival. Tourism, contributing significantly to the Valley’s GDP, around 10 per cent pre-2019, suffered a devastating blow. With 48 key destinations being temporarily closed for security reasons, bookings canceled en masse, hotels reported 40–50 per cent staff retrenchment. Despite a partial recovery with over ten and half lakh domestic and a smattering of foreign tourists recorded in the Valley by year-end, the overall footfall in Jammu and Kashmir dipped to 1.5 crore from 2.5 crore in 2024.
Compounding these perennial political issues, the long neglected environmental vulnerabilities and ecological fragility inherent to the Valley’s economic growth came to the fore. Record-high temperatures in summer, the hottest in decades, flash floods claiming lives, and erratic snowfall disrupted agriculture—apples contribute nearly 80 per cent of India’s supply—and hydropower potential being the main casualties.
Thus, in 2025, like every other year, the Valley’s economy remains peripheral, prone to security shocks which has now taken the shape of a binding constraint on the already limited private sector growth resulting in a seemingly structural unemployment level of over 30 per cent among the youth. None of these hit the headlines in the national dailies. Nor did it engage the policy makers at the national or regional level in any meaningful manner.
What captured widespread attention were the carefully curated and staged optics of cultural events in Kashmir. High-profile initiatives — like the Srinagar Marathon attracting runners from across India and abroad, the Kashmir Literature Festival, and the Veshaw Literary Festival — enjoyed substantial government patronage. Officially presented as celebrations of literary heritage and intellectual exchange, these gatherings primarily served to project an image of normalcy while promoting a specific ideological narrative.
Far from being neutral literary spaces, these festivals functioned as platforms for “narrative correction,” showcasing cultural vibrancy and accessibility to domestic and international audiences. Yet, paradoxically, 2025 will be remembered as the year an unprecedented book ban was imposed, aimed at erasing aspects of Kashmiri collective memory. Rather than genuinely reviving intellectual discourse stifled for decades, these events prioritized curated appearances of harmony and openness. The intense drive to “correct” history rendered them less as inclusive forums and more as strategically managed spectacles designed to signal normalcy to the rest of India and the world.
The year just gone by leaves Kashmir standing at all too familiar a crossroads. If another cycle of misplaced hope and quiet endurance has to be avoided, the New Year’s resolution of Kashmiri civil society must be to do some serious introspection, starting today. In the obsession with political and constitutional changes, the drift in society is not being addressed at all. The Red Fort bomb blast and the unravelling of it with involvement of educated Kashmiri youth should be a wakeup call for the Kashmiri intelligentsia. From being a hotbed of militancy in the 1990s, is Kashmir threatening to being a new epicenter of terrorism? A broader and wider conversation is required starting from the existential crisis since August 2019, at various levels; political, administrative or sociological. Otherwise, the way the situation is evolving it will put the future of Kashmiri society into exile.
The author is a Contributing Editor of Greater Kashmir.