Since the last couple of weeks, Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) has been in the news like never before. First, Indian political top brass made a shrill pitch regarding integrating POKJ with India. This was followed by social unrest in POKJ, with the locals demanding basic amenities from the Pakistani establishment and calling for merger with India.
While the prospect of integrating POKJ back with India sounds good on paper and as a political campaign, in reality, will it serve any real purpose for India? Does it make a good socio-political sense to have this piece of land, which has been detached from mainstream India for the last 76 years? The conditions are certainly unfavourable. It will pose humongous security and financial challenges for the country.
Immediately after Independence, on October 22, 1947, Pakistan decided to put into operation the nefarious ‘Operation Gulmarg’ to invade Jammu and Kashmir and capture it by force. Over the next few days, the bloody campaign spearheaded by tribal invaders but backed and operationalised by the Pakistan Army saw thousands of innocent people of Jammu and Kashmir being killed.
Countless women were raped and numerous towns and villages were plundered and pillaged. This led Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir and the Indian government to negotiate the terms of accession, leading to the signing of the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, inviting the Indian Army to come to aid.
Thus the battle between India and Pakistan started on October 28, 1947, to save Kashmir from the Pakistan army. It continued till January 1, 1949, till it was referred to the UN council for further disposal. In this 15-month war, India could clear two-fifths of J&K area. Again in 1965 Pakistan launched operation Gibraltar to wrest J&K, which was foiled by the Indian Army. Pakistan again invaded in 1999 in the Kargil Sector where the Indian army fought back to regain the lost ground under heavy cost of men and material.
The idea of narrating these battles has been to highlight that this is not the first time that a battle for J&K is being fought and also to enumerate the difficulties faced while fighting in the mountain terrain.
POJK is stretched over about 2.22 lakh sq km area, dotted with a number of Himalayan ranges, varying altitude from 3,000 to 4,000 thousand feet in the south, to 17,000 to 24,000 feet in the north; so each ridge and post needs independent battle. Guarding these treacherous mountain ranges is extremely difficult, as it sucks in a huge amount of manpower and resources.
Even if POJK integrates with India, Pakistan won’t sit quietly. It will keep on attacking Kashmir since it wants to disintegrate India as a revenge for its own break-up in 1971, for which it holds India as responsible.
We are already overstretched. With Pakistan waging a proxy war by using POJK as a platform and while China is also showing its fangs since the Galwan valley conflict in 2020, we are already short of manpower and resources in all the three Services. If we have to guard the excess stretch of land, we have to double our army and Air Force presence in POJK, which will add to the expenses.
Besides, the economic repercussions will be too much to handle. The gross domestic product of Jammu and Kashmir was estimated at ₹1.76 lakh crore (equivalent to ₹2.1 trillion or US$26 billion in 2023) in 2020–21.
POK’s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture and also relies on remittances sent by the large Mirpuri diaspora, mostly based in Luton and Birmingham in the United Kingdom. In 2022, its GDP was estimated to be US $6.6 billion.
One may easily evaluate the vast difference in economy between these two parts. India will, therefore, even if it succeeds to take POK will inherit nothing but additional poverty and disparity and buy tremendous headache.
Considering the socio-economic backwardness of this region, we will need tremendous logistical backup to provide all kinds of support materials for the area’s development in terms of education, health care, road connectivity, food and water and employment opportunities.
We are still struggling to provide these amenities to our people. Do we have the ability to provide all these to the people of POJK?
We already have nearly 2 billion mouths to feed. Can we afford to add more? All combined, taking POK may not be an ideal venture. This money can be well spent on India’s economic growth. Also, POJK is an alien territory for us and the people have been traditionally hostile.
Accepting LOC as an international border should be the best option to resolve our territorial dispute, which has been proposed in the past by governments of both nations. At least, we shouldn’t take POK forcefully. Let it happen naturally.
