Do our votes matter?

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” Cassius in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare.

The Omar Abdullah led government has been in “power” for one year to the day, today. From comrades to competitors, critics to clerics, and admirers to adversaries everyone is disappointed. Including, perhaps, Omar Abdullah himself.

After leading his party to a decisive electoral victory signaling a political resurgence which should have made him stronger, he has instead grown weaker and meeker with every passing day. The electoral triumph of National Conference has been subsumed by the travails of Omar Abdullah’s style of politics and tribulations of the substance of his governance. Indeed, disappointment has given way to disillusionment and palpable public disaffection for the party in power. The mood, for sure, at least in the Valley, is one of despondency and hopelessness.

He and his government have been mocked in 365 different ways during the last one year; every single day. On his status, his powerlessness, his capitulation and even his demeanor. No sooner than he shakes a hand, rubs a shoulder or blinks an eye, a barrage of verbal and textual assault and abuse, orchestrated and amplified through social media, is unleashed. The tone is condescending; one of disdain meant to ridicule making it only about personal vilification rather than about constructive criticism and oversight.

While this political theater is admittedly an intrinsic part of democratic politics, it is distracting public and political attention from the underlying systemic issues. Inherent in the current governance framework are structural limitations on any elected leader, regardless of who occupies the Chief Minister’s chair. As a result, the focus is not on the binding system which offers no leeway or elbow room for any elected leader of J&K to function, at least for now or in the near foreseeable future.

The bigger concern is that contrary to being the wind under its wings, the size, scale and spread of the electoral victory appears to be the reason for the complete administrative failure of the government. A decisive assertion led by the Valley in voting for National Conference appears to have evoked an avowed disavowal of the elected by the unelected government. The exercise in democratic empowerment has been converted into an activity of daily disenfranchisement and denial. The stronger the electoral mandate, the weaker the governing authority. It is a textbook tale of how democracies can engineer majority rule without power.

Kashmiris, the demographic majority, may still have the electoral might. But being a political minority now, their votes lack the institutional weight to enable governance. The last one year in J&K is a case study of how institutions have maintained the facade of participation while centralizing control. And how structural designs can sideline numerical majorities rendering them politically imbecile and administratively impotent.

Kashmiris’ votes “elect” a government, but the system’s design ensures it does not equate to governing authority. Ironically, and perhaps paradoxically, it seems that stronger the electoral mandate, the weaker the governing authority. They today lack the elite networks that would have empowered the person they voted for. The people that propelled National Conference to victory with anti-BJP fervor, and a populist mandate lack the institutional leverage, unified bargaining power and economic clout, to shield it from Delhi’s veto.

The Chief Minister’s weakness is not intrinsic but inherited from the irrelevance of the Kashmiri vote. The last one year is not about the humiliation of Omar Abdullah as Chief Minister. It is a humiliation of every single Kashmiri who voted for the National Conference. And even those who didn’t vote for him but voted. It is not a disenfranchisement of National Conference. It is the disenfranchisement of the Kashmiri voter, who is now a “political underling”. “A leader’s fortunes depend more on the strength of their supporters”, wrote Machiavelli, “than on “virtu” (skill) and “fortuna” (circumstances)”, in his classic, The Prince, nearly five hundred years ago! The subservient position of the Chief Minister of J&K is a systemic artifact rather than an individual flaw of the current incumbent.

More than the ineptitude of a politician or the dysfunctionality of a political organization, it is the fragility of the supporter base that’s been systematically disempowered: politically marginalized, socially polarized, economically strained, and demographically fragmented. The prognosis is grim: anyone ascending to power would inherit the same brittle mandate, rendering them supplicants rather than sub-sovereigns.

The current structure perpetuates a cycle where Kashmiris’ political agency is diluted: their majority status fuels turnout, signaling hope for change, yet outcomes reinforce disillusionment. Theoretically, this risks alienation, where participation without influence erodes democratic legitimacy.

Having said that, statecraft is also about the ability and capability to navigate such asymmetries. Omar Abdullah has chosen to employ “soft power” – compliance over confrontation with New Delhi to preserve the limited influence. “Moderation”, as his political stance today is, might seem like a shield against subservience, but it is ultimately a thinner veil over the structural frailty. This makes the problem not only complex but also contradictory: the electoral mandate emerging from Kashmir continues to be rooted in regional identity and autonomy aspirations. However, this base is inherently fragile in a realpolitik sense: it lacks alignment with the central apparatus, be it the political executive, the security agencies, bureaucracy, or the judiciary. The Union Government rationale is very clear: prioritizing national security over local empowerment.

Hence the National Conference’s stated position of statehood as a “right, not concession” sounds more like a petition. Others, especially those not in power, may issue it as a threat. But those too will be undermined by the same snare, perhaps more because even as they may intellectually vocal, they are demographically thinner with a much narrower base in one region of the Valley. For now, they may be strong in articulation but are weak in numbers.

There is thus a need to reframe the vulnerabilities of J&K’s political class not as personal failings but as structural inevitability tied to the nature of their power base. Politically, the Valley-centric parties represent an electorate rendered ineffective by centralization, downgrade and conflict’s long shadow. Until this base coalesces into something unbreakable -- via a unified political front and economic self-reliance – it will be meaningless. All the Valley leaders are fundamentally paper princes in a principality of pleas, where supporters’ cheers amplify the echo but can’t alleviate the constraints.

On its part, the Valley electorate read the situation better than the political class. In the elections they voted in one direction to send one message for the political class to act in unison. In doing so, they collectively subsumed the “pessimism of intellect” by the “optimism of will”. It is this thinking and the sentiment underlying it that is being betrayed; not only by the ruling party but by all the Valley-centric political parties. A calibrated balance between the two is the only way for the state and civil society to come out of a state of demoralization and despondency.

The author is a Contributing Editor of Greater Kashmir