Economist and national spokesperson of the Congress Salman Soz spoke to The Wire Talks about Article 370, stating that it was “in the vanguard” of the constitutional spirit of decentralisation, of reflecting the local sensibilities of the people. “Article 370 was there from the 1950s. And there was no terrorism in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, until things changed and Pakistan got an opportunity. So, to say that Article 370 has anything to do with the terrorism and separatism, I don’t think the facts support that,” he said in conversation with Sidharth Bhatia, The Wire’s founding editor and host of the podcast. Soz also spoke at length about Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, and how it was the only Muslim-majority state in a Hindu-majority country, “That was Sheikh Abdullah’s vision. Instead of celebrating it, there was a concerted effort to tear it down,” he said. Read the full transcript of the conversation below. It has been edited lightly for clarity.§Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks. I’m Sidharth Bhatia. Seven years ago, Home minister Amit Shah stood up in the Lok Sabha and made a dramatic announcement: Article 370, which had underpinned the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to the Union of India, had been read down. With that one stroke, the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which included Ladakh, was gone and in its place would come two separate entities. The Union territory (UT) of J&K, and another UT of Ladakh.As the people of the erstwhile state recovered from the shock, security in the former state, which was already very high, was increased and soon the government was to declare that the situation was normal and peaceful with additional soldiers all over the place. Since then, many changes have taken place – including elections to the Union territory – but effective control still lies with the lieutenant governor. There was a major instance of terrorism also, which was supposed to have disappeared.A promise of restoring statehood has not yet been fulfilled. To discuss this situation, I invited Salman Soz, a very prominent Kashmiri, who’s the national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress.He is an economist who was with the World Bank for 25 years. He has advised governments across several continents on economic policy and institutional reform. He’s the co-author of Unshackling India, with Ajay Chhibber, and the author of a good book, The Great Disappointment: How Narendra Modi Squandered a Unique Opportunity to Transform the Indian Economy. His Substack, The Outside View, examines India’s economy from a global perspective.Salman Soz, welcome to The Wire Talks.Salman Soz: Thank you Sidharth.Sidharth: Salman, my first question, were you shocked when the announcement was made?Salman: Actually, this is a very interesting story. I was in Delhi on August 4 and I was flying to Kashmir when I got a call from NDTV and they were talking about how this is imminent now. “So where are you now, we want a bite”, and I said, “I’m headed to Kashmir, my flight is taking off”. So, I took off and went there, and on August 5, we were told by our guards – and my father is a protected person because he was a former Union minister – not to go out. They said even I can’t go out. Then we found out on TV what was going on because our guards had become our jailers. That’s how it all happened. I was not totally shocked, because I’d already been tipped off by some media house, and then it happened. Of course, it was somewhat unbelievable because we didn’t really understand how this could be done legally. Then the government came up with a way which I still believe is not correct. Even though the Supreme Court then gave it a stamp of approval, I think a lot can be said about that order. But here we are in 2026, still in some ways, J&K is reeling from that step.Sidharth: The BJP, in its manifesto, had said they would do away with Article 370. So, it shouldn’t have come as a shock. Salman: Well, they had been saying that for a long time. BJP had been anti-Article 370 for a long time. It’s an ideological thing for them, but the question really is – the question we should be asking ourselves – is what’s the impact of what happened on August 5, 2019? And of course, what were the arguments that were put forward by the BJP and how do they hold up? More importantly, what does it mean for India? Did what happened in J&K have an impact, or will it have an impact on India, our constitution, our federal structure, our future? Are we already seeing some of the consequences of that fateful decision?Sidharth: Yeah, I’ll come to the consequences, but at that time, the BJP’s claim was that finally the region had now been fully integrated with the Union, and therefore there was no need for a special constitutional provision. This was their claim. How does it stand up according to you?Salman: You know, J&K was fully integrated with the country. In some ways, what BJP did actually raised some of these issues from the dead. Now a very specific problem with what happened was that China somehow was brought into the picture. China had been quiet about J&K for a long time, and was not really getting involved at all. We knew that Pakistan would dabble, and China did in a very specific way and I think that was not the right thing for our country. In terms of integration, I really think that ultimately, people feel a sense of belonging and that you cannot enforce – that comes from the heart and it’s the sense that we are part of this country, we have to manage, we have to, over time, figure things out. I don’t think Article 370 by any means had anything to do with what happened over the years. Article 370 was there from the 1950s and there was no terrorism in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s – until things changed in the political environment and Pakistan got an opportunity. So to say that Article 370 has anything to do with the terrorism and separatism, I don’t think the facts support that. BJP can say it all at once, but I don’t think the facts support that. Sidharth: Article 370, which you said was there from the 1950s, how did that actually help the state?Salman: Well, I think in a number of ways. First of all, let’s think about India as a constitutional democracy with its federal structure. The spirit of the constitution is that ultimately power should vest at the local levels. People should be determining their own fate to the extent possible, of course we have a national vision for that but then people know their circumstances the best. That’s the spirit of the constitution. In fact, we made several amendments, for example, the idea of decentralisation that the late Rajiv Gandhi promoted heavily, and we still are far from that dream. But that’s the spirit and Article 370 is in my view at the vanguard of it. So, what was happening in J&K through that Article – and it’s not just J&K by the way, there are other states which had some special circumstances through Article 371; there are various sub articles for states in the Northeast, some other kind of accommodations made for local sensitivities, for local customs… So this was not just J&K. But of course, J&K’s Article 370 was the vanguard of Indian federalism. The BJP and supporters of the reading down or the abrogation of Article 370 may think that it is in the past. I believe that Article 370 is India’s future, because India will be stronger, if we decentralise governance and Article 370 is basically that idea, and if we can do that well – and we may call it something else – but ultimately people at the local level should be in charge of their destinies.That is what Article 370 was about. And of course there are other elements to it, and we must not shy away from the fact that this was the only Muslim-majority state in the country – a country that was born out of a very horrific Partition. To have a Muslim-majority state in a Hindu-majority country was a wonderful thing, I think that was what Sheikh Abdullah’s vision was and so, instead of celebrating it, there was a concerted effort to tear it down.In some ways, we hurt ourselves by doing that. We hurt our own secular foundations by doing that. We basically made Pakistan feel like we are not secular. So Article 370 should have been celebrated. I think it was a good example and it could have been a kind of a prototype for how Indian federalism would evolve. But unfortunately, the BJP and others did not see it that way. I think there will be a cost to that but ultimately, I feel that this is the future for India.Sidharth: So are you suggesting that Article 370 suggested emphasising the secularism of the Indian state?Salman: First of all, Article 370 was in some ways meant for making sure that local sensibilities/sensitivities, local traditions are protected, local insecurities are taken care of, because people may have been insecure early on. So it’s a very small accommodation to make. We make accommodations for different states all the time and I think that is okay. India is a very diverse country. We have very diverse kinds of viewpoints, perspectives and lives. So it’s okay to make those accommodations, and if we don’t then we’re actually making things more difficult. I mean if we go for uniformity in such a diverse country, I don’t think that’s good for India. I think we’re already seeing some of that, whether it’s in Manipur or Tamil Nadu. There are different ways in which [we can see] this imposition of uniformity is not a good thing for the country. So, Article 370 took care of a lot of those emotional needs and protections for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. I think that was the idea. It didn’t come at any great cost. Terrorism was not because of Article 370 [even though] BJP says that terrorism was basically because of Article 370. I can show you actual government data on why that is not the case. They can talk about development. We can talk about development. I can share you the data on development and people may be surprised by how much better off J&K was than even the Prime Minister’s home state. On all counts, I’m not sure this was a good step.Sidharth: Coming back to the point you made earlier, how has doing away with, the reading down, or the dilution of Article 370 helped India? That was one of the things that you mentioned. Let’s look at that.Salman: Well… I personally don’t think it has actually helped India. I think it has hurt us. Let’s just look at J&K as a state. It became the first state to be actually demoted to Union territory status, which is I think a very dangerous precedent, and then it was partitioned without asking the people of J&K what they wanted to do. The central government can come to any state now and say this is what we’re going to do. That’s a very dangerous thing for any state if the central government – especially if it is a powerful central government – – could make up an excuse for political reasons. By the way, if they could do delimitation in J&K after this happened and give six seats to Jammu and one seat to Kashmir, whereas the population ratios are totally opposite, they can do anything. I think a lot of what is happening in Kashmir, or J&K, is now what we’re seeing happening in the rest of the country. So, I think it was a big blow to India’s federal structure. We internationalised something at a level that we had not done in the past. I gave you the Chinese example. I don’t think we’ve made J&K much more secure. Yes, you don’t see stone pelting anymore because of the heavy presence of the security forces and in some ways, you’re suppressing that element. But what has also happened is that now, nobody talks in J&K. You won’t hear political opinions in J&K that much. I think everything is being kept within close quarters and that is a dangerous thing.I don’t think that’s a good thing. Militancy seems to have shifted away from the Valley even though we’ve had some major attacks recently, but now it’s shifted to some further reaches of the Jammu province. So, the militancy has kind of shifted in character, so there are a lot of things. And by the way people are very unhappy because they elected a government and that government has no power. The chief minister is sometimes not allowed to walk around freely. So…Sidharth: Yeah, but on the face of it, the central government can easily suggest that, ‘look, the elections were held, there was robust political activity, tourism is up’, and as you said, stone pelting is down. In fact, there were terrorist incidents but it’s much less than what it was earlier. So as you said, they can claim that it has been largely successful.Salman: Well, let’s take that one by one. On terrorism, there’s data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, in which if you break down the 21st century data from 2000 to 2025 and look at these five-year parts – 2000 to 2005, 2005 to 2010, and so on – you will see that the highest declines in terrorism were during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time and Dr. Manmohan Singh’s time. In fact, I think in 2012 or so, we had 112 deaths, which was one of the lowest after thousands of deaths in the ’90s and in the early 2000s. Then there was a pickup after 2016 to 2020, and then we’ve had some declines. So, it’s not this incredible decline that the government talks about. Of course, we have seen fewer deaths this time and stone pelting is not there. I’m happy about that. People were sick and tired of stone pelting. But in terms of making the argument that now we have so many tourists, you only have to look at the data from 2011-12 to see what kind of tourism was happening then. And most of this tourism is religious tourism in Vaishno Devi that used to happen for years. In 2010, 2011, 2012 you’ll see tourist arrivals – we call them tourists but they’re religious tourists – of more than a crore before. So I don’t buy that argument. Certainly, on stone pelting, that’s a good thing that we don’t have that, but on the other hand, you have to also consider other things. Thousands of people are in detention, and there’s no trial for 7 years I think. We haven’t had Eid prayers in Jamia Masjid, and what do you think is the impact of all that on people who live there? These are serious questions that we have to dabble with.Of course, the government and the BJP may not have any interest in that. But when you keep things to yourself without an event, I think there could be problems in the future. And this is not good, anyway, for our democracy. For example, after August 5, 2019, the entire political leadership of J&K was detained. All. Senior people, including Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Saifuddin Soz, and all these people were detained. That is not a good thing. By the way, when you hear of the student protests happening these days and that they’re not allowed to protest freely, the model is Kashmir because it’s very hard for anybody to protest peacefully! That is the model and it’s being applied in the rest of the country.Pallet guns, first applied in Kashmir, and now it’s a huge issue. Where did it come from? Kashmir became the laboratory. They wanted to bring the ‘Gujarat model’, and now they are giving us the ‘Kashmir model’. Is that what the country wants? It’s not. I’m sure the country doesn’t want that.Sidharth: Moving to Jammu, the people of Jammu were supposed to have welcomed [Article 370] but now they are also extremely critical. Firstly, is this perception correct? And secondly, if so, why?Salman: Jammu is a very diverse region. So, there is no single view on this. But I think people in Jammu who may have supported abrogation, may have felt that that is going to somehow bring a lot of development to Jammu, but as they have discovered, the BJP really has no time for development in Jammu or Kashmir for that matter. Unemployment rates are extremely high now. Youth unemployment rates [in J&K] are among the worst in the country. So that affects Kashmiris and Dogras the same way. Look, private investment across the country is not happening that much so I would be shocked if private investment in J&K is better than the national average. On top of that, people of Ladakh are unhappy because they thought they were getting something good and now they’ve been struggling for the last seven years to basically get an assembly for the Union territory, and the central government has not committed to anything. You could say the people of Jammu and Kashmir need their representatives. They have their representatives. They were told that you should come and vote and they did, and they chose their representatives, but those representatives are, quite frankly, powerless. One thing on elections though: you know if the BJP – if the prime minister or the home minister – claimed that a lot of people came out to vote, I can tell you that more people voted in previous elections and we have data on the election commission’s website. This is not the first time that people have come out to vote in J&K. They’ve been voting for a long time. It’s just a narrative that is spun that there’s more tourism, there’s more development, there are more roads, there’s a train. The train preceded Prime Minister Modi. The roads preceded Prime Minister Modi. Voting preceded Prime Minister Modi. Development preceded Prime Minister Modi. If you indulge me, I’ll give you some basic data that has been collected by the Government of India. So, Gujarat versus J&K: who is more developed? This is the 2015-16 data because that’s the last time the national family health survey was done. Life expectancy: Gujarat, 69, and J&K, 74; under-five mortality rate: Gujarat, 33, and J&K, 26; total fertility rate: Gujarat 2.2 and J&K, 1.7; percentage of girls aged 15 to 19 with 8 years of schooling: Gujarat, 75, and JNK, 87; percentage of underweight children Gujarat 39 and J&K 17; I can go on and on – by the way, wages of male rural neighbours: Gujarat 116 and J&K 209 – there is no comparison, Sidharth. There is no comparison.Sidharth: One of the things that is used as a counter to that is a lot of money has been thrown into Jammu and Kashmir, and so this is the result of that.Salman: Well, people say that a lot of the money that went to Jammu and Kashmir has been stolen by the political leadership of Jammu and Kashmir. On the other hand, some say that you actually used the money and that’s why your indicators are good. You can’t have it both ways – either we are all thieves or the money was put to good use. And by the way, this whole idea of J&K getting a lot more money and everybody else did not, that’s not true. J&K is not the only state that has a special dispensation in terms of finances. Border states and small states have that. That’s our right. That is not a freebie.Sidharth: There were fears – though it is one way to look at it. The other way to look at it was the national narrative: ‘Come buy land in Jammu and Kashmir, it’s going to be very easy. Come build hotels, bungalows, villas’. That was a real fear. I remember reading that the people of Jammu also were very upset about this. Of course, people of Kashmir too. Has that happened at all?Salman: Honestly, there’s not a lot of transparency around that. Domicile certificates were a concern for people. By the way, this is a concern for everybody, and to my mind, it may be a bigger concern for the people of Jammu. Why? Because if anybody moves to another place – first of all I don’t know why people would move – but if you were to move because of some fervour and you want to move, you would probably not move to the presumably more dangerous place. You might go to move to a less dangerous place and their first port of call would be Jammu. I don’t think the people of Jammu want that, because they also want to preserve their cultural heritage and their identity. Just like Kashmiris, Dogras have their own identity. And by the way, Article 370 and its precursor is all from Maharaja Hari Singh’s time. It’s from the Maharajas of Jammu. I think in some ways, people are beginning to understand that certain things that have not gone right are not just for Kashmiris, they’re also for the people of Jammu, and that we are in this together. I think that’s something to be remembered. This may have happened, to some extent, in terms of getting domicile certificates etc, but I don’t know what the extent is because there’s very little transparency. We have no idea quite frankly what to believe in, in J&K, because our representatives are not really in power.Sidharth: You mean benami land buying could be going on?Salman: It could be going on. You get a domicile certificate then you buy something, maybe invest something. That’s what I mean, there’s very little transparency. And by the way, good luck with getting an RTI application approved and get responded to. I don’t think that’s happening even in the rest of the country, to that extent, and certainly not in J&K. Sidharth: I don’t think we should bring RTI into it because that seemed like a moribund kind of a…[laughter]. Three years ago, the Modi government assured that they would restore statehood and there was no timeline, but so far, no progress. Firstly, will that happen? Secondly, what kind of statehood would that be, and more importantly, what should it be?Salman: I think statehood is the minimum that J&K should have and this should have happened a long time back. I don’t understand what – of course the only reason they may not want to have statehood would be that they want to control the Union territory. That’s the way they can do it because, if it’s a security issue that’s a totally ridiculous [explanation]. In 1999, for example; there were elections and those days, there were lots of killings, and we had a fully functional state till 2019. Is the government saying that now seven years after 2019, the situation in J&K is so bad that we cannot have our state? That’s what they’re saying, because what other reason can there be? Now I think that would be the starting point and it would be a proper state. And one just like any other state where governors will try to interfere with our governance, that’s the kind of state we want at a minimum. And then of course, we should push for some of the special provisions that we had. Why not? That was constitutional. It is our right to struggle peacefully for what we believe to be within the constitutional framework.I don’t see anything wrong with that. I know that such protests and such demonstrations have been in some ways almost criminalised in J&K but I must warn people in the rest of the country that what happens in Jammu and Kashmir happens then in the rest of the country, and we should not allow it. This is our country and we have to get our rights that are constitutionally protected. Peaceful protest is a constitutional protection. We should not let go of these rights.Sidharth: That’s beginning to happen in other parts of the country as we can see. My question also included whether it should be a tripartite partite state like the old Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, or how do you envisage it?Salman: Well, ideally, we would all sit together and decide. We would invite our brothers and sisters from Ladakh and say let’s have a conversation about it. Ultimately, and I’m a firm believer in decentralization, if they feel that they’re better off with their own full state with an assembly, with their own chief minister, with the governor, then I think that’s okay. But we must have a conversation. We should have an opportunity to talk amongst ourselves, the people from Kashmir, people from Jammu, people from Ladakh, all of us together, because it affects us all. I don’t want my personal preferences to have anything to do with what comes out eventually. I would strongly prefer that we have a kind of platform for dialogue and discussion.Sidharth: The promise of statehood, the assurance, has not yet moved forward as I said, there was no timeline given, what do you think is going to happen in the future? The near and medium-term future, because the current chief minister, Mr. Omar Abdullah, says he hardly has any powers. From what you are saying, reading down Article 370 has not really helped the state in any major way, whatever the narrative may be. So, what do you think is going to unfold in the immediate future and in the medium-term future?Salman: Look Sidharth, I believe that there is no movement, there are no people who get their rights without struggle. We have to struggle. And it is a struggle that the political leadership, civil society must undertake, I think.Sidharth: Is there any society in Kashmir which –Salman: Well right now, no. I mean, right now everything has basically in some ways disappeared and that’s a worrisome thing. I do think that it’s very useful to have civil society organisations having discussions – open discussions – the politicians having open discussions. If the politicians think that Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah is going to give them a state – let’s just assume for a moment that statehood is what there is consensus around – if anybody thinks that this can happen just automatically then it would have happened earlier because nothing really has changed in the last few years. Right? So I don’t think that is going to happen.I think we really have to demand our right to have a state, and the rest of the country should be supporting us. The rest of the country should be making the case that this far and no further, we will not let any other state have this kind of a situation. But to my colleagues in Jammu and Kashmir, I would say that it is time to do something, to peacefully agitate for our state, because we know it is hurting our people because they don’t have that representation. And if people continue to not have representation despite the fact that they voted, when they were promised that they would have their own government – it is our government, weather good, bad or ugly, we voted for it decisively – then then we must have them leading our state, because they know what the problems of people are. Whether it is in Jammu or Poonch, Rajouri, Anantag, Baramulla, Srinagar or whatever, they know – not the lieutenant governor, not his advisers. They don’t know! They don’t know our problems! So I think the political leadership of Jammu and Kashmir must rise to the occasion and I’ve seen the chief minister go to Jantar Mantar. I think more of that has to happen, because this is our right. I don’t understand why we’re not doing more of that. We should.Sidharth: Well, one last question about something that is quite bothersome troubling: we’ve been reading instances of Kashmiri students being harassed in other parts of the country. What do you think, because of these narratives, has been the kind of perception of Kashmiris in other parts of India? Salman: Well, probably not very good right now. We keep seeing instances of young people from Kashmir going out and then they don’t get accommodation or they’re harassed etc. But this is not new. I remember I went to college in the 1980s. I actually went to Karnataka for a few weeks. Actually, it was not in a bad way but kind of a half joking way [someone said], “Oh here you are, a Pakistani” and all that stuff. This was 1989. Now it’s much more direct and in your face, and it’s meant to be hurtful and look, I mean J&K is going nowhere. It’s going to be part of India forever, so the people of J&K have to assert their rights. And the rest of the country should also embrace the people of J&K fully. But if there are elements in the rest of the country who don’t view the people of Jammu and Kashmir as equals then that is a problem for the country – not just for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Because today you will not treat us as equals, tomorrow you will not treat somebody else as equals, and eventually there will be a whole line of unequal people in the country. And is that going to be good for the country? I don’t think so.Sidharth: Okay. Well, on that note, Salman Soz, thank you very much. I think that’s a pretty good, comprehensive look at what’s happening and what should happen. Salman, you are a policy man. So, obviously your analysis is quite intellectual and analytical but it’s also an emotional issue for you and for so many others. I think whether the narrative is accurate or not, the general idea is that Kashmir is part of India and India is part of Kashmir. I know people who plan vacations there and they want to go and see it for themselves. It’s not like the good old ‘60s where film stars were shooting there, but it’s quite active. Thank you Salman Soz for joining us today and talking about what’s been happening in the last seven years after Article 370 was read down. That was Salman Soz of the Indian National Congress, but much more than that, he’s an economist who was with the World Bank for many years. We’ll be back again next week with another guest. Till then from me, Sidharth Bhatia, and the rest of the team, goodbye.