It’s 8 pm and the streets of Srinagar — the capital of Indian Kashmir — are desolate, with one of the strictest curfews the region has seen. But at the tourist reception center in the heart of the city, rows of migrant workers from other parts of India sleep on any patch of ground available, waiting for the morning buses to ferry them out of Kashmir. That’s not how it was supposed to be. When India’s Home Minister Amit Shah announced last Monday that New Delhi was stripping the state of Jammu and Kashmir of a special status that gave it greater autonomy, the government argued it would help to better integrate the troubled region with the rest of the country. Shah — who is also Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s de facto deputy — told parliament that scrapping Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave Kashmir special rights, would help the federal government serve the region’s people better. Shah also declared the bifurcation of the state into two federally governed regions. |