ISLAMABAD – The coffee machines have been cold, computer screens blank andwork stations empty for two months in Kashmir’s Silicon Valley as an Indiancommunications blockade on the troubled region takes a growing toll onbusiness.
The dozen software development companies in the Rangreth industrial estateon the edge of Srinagar bring tens of millions of dollars of crucialrevenue into the region each year.
But the cutting of internet and mobile phone links on August 5, when theNew Delhi government ended Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, has crippledbusiness.
Rangreth has become a ghost town, a symbol of suffering across the region.
The government said the crackdown, backed by the presence of hundreds ofthousands of security forces, was needed to head off trouble byPakistan-backed militants in the Muslim-majority territory.
Pakistan also claims Kashmir which the two neighbours divided when theybecame independent in 1947 and have squabbled over ever since.
Markets, banks, schools, clothes stores and the fledgling hi-tech industryhave all been closed. Many locals say the shutdown is in protest at thegovernment action. Authorities blame militant threats.
Rangreth’s warehouse-style halls, normally packed with young T-shirtedprogrammers, are empty.
“It’s a devastating blow to the software business in Kashmir. Internet islike oxygen to our business and it has been taken away,” the owner of onecompany with clients all over the world told AFP on condition of anonymity.
– No computers, no cars –
The businessman said clients’ patience was running out. “We’re likely tolose them.”
Jahangir Rasool, chief executive of internet provider STC, said he wasdetained by police for six days for keeping lines open for a few hours tohelp another company in his building that has clients in the United States.
Rasool said his firm and others have the firewalls and protocols to blocksocial media or “political propaganda” on the internet. But he said Indianauthorities would not listen.
“They sent police and intelligence agencies to inspect our systems. We toldthem that the IT sector will collapse (without the internet). They said:’Let it. We are not taking any risks’,” declared the director of anothercompany with clients in the Middle East.
Authorities have unblocked most landlines. But apart from 6,000 mobilesused by police and government officials, most of Kashmir’s 880,000 mobileconnections and internet services remain suspended.
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State governor Satya Pal Malik in August said the lines were mainly usefulas a “weapon” for “terrorists and Pakistanis for mobilisation andindoctrination”.
Some IT companies have already laid off workers, many are preparing to movetheir business away from Kashmir.
Rasool at STC said his company had lost more than $2.8 million in businesssince August 5 and has laid off two thirds of its 370 employees.
“We can’t function in a total blackout,” said STC’s finance chief Abid Bhatwho compared the shutdown to being “blind”.
High-tech is not alone in its suffering.
Not a single car or truck has been sold in two months by dealers across theKashmir Valley, said Aawan Ahmad Narwaroo, head of one Srinagar cardealership.
He reckoned about 5,000 vehicles and motorbikes were sold in the same twomonths last year.
Official records show no new vehicles have been registered with theauthorities since August 5.
“It’s a collapse of Kashmir’s economy. It’s not possible to calculate thesnowballing losses,” Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry vicepresident Nasir Hamid Khan told AFP.
“About 1,200 trucks carrying Kashmiri produce used to ply daily on the mainhighway out. Today we hear not even 100 do,” Khan said.
At least three top business leaders were among thousands arrested after theAugust 5 clampdown. The executives are still in detention.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a top police officer told AFP thedecision to reopen mobile and internet services would be taken by India’spowerful Home Minister Amit Shah.
“He (Shah) is asking for guarantees that no large scale protests willhappen if the services are resumed. And there is no official here todayconfident enough to put his neck on the block,” the police official said.-APP/AFP