The Invisible Cage: When "Security" Steals Time and Hope

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In 2025, as the world dreams of flying cars saving commute hours, Kashmiris face a harsher truth: their time isn’t saved—it’s confiscated. Daily life here revolves around navigating a military occupation, where freedom of movement is a luxury. 

Why? The Convoy Ritual 

Every day (except Fridays), Indian army convoys with hundreds of trucks move on NH44 forcing local to halt so that army may pass on 4 lane road with a barrier between two roads 10 meters. If you’re traveling:

  • Sick? Your hospital appointment waits.

  • Late for work? Your job can wait.

  • Emergency? No exceptions.
    Pleading gets you nowhere. Soldiers cite "security threats," dismissing pleas with indifference. What should be a 1-hour trip becomes 2+ hours, with city traffic jams adding 30+ minutes more . 

The Hidden Agenda: "Taming" Through Trauma

This isn’t just inefficiency—it’s psychological warfare:

  • Stolen Time = Stolen Dignity: Forcing people to wait for hours teaches helplessness. It whispers: "Your life matters less than our routines."

  • Silenced Dissent: Criticizing convoys risks arrest under laws like PSA/UAPA. Journalists and activists face raids, detentions, and censorship.

  • Normalizing Oppression: By making disruption routine, authorities condition Kashmiris to accept eroded autonomy as "normal".

Why Flying Cars? A Cruel Irony

Globally, flying cars promise liberation from traffic. In Kashmir? They’re a fantasy because:

  • Infrastructure? Requires open skies, vertiports, trust. Kashmir has checkpoints, internet blackouts (like the 500-day shutdown post-2019), and land seized for military bases .

  • Priorities? The state invests in control, not innovation. Connectivity and mobility are suppressed to enforce "integration". 

The Human Cost: Beyond Delays

Behind convoys lies generational trauma:

  • Children grow up seeing rifles before schoolbooks.

  • Ambulances stall at checkpoints; dreams stall in endless waits.

  • Tourism—once an economic lifeline for few people not for all—collapses as 55% of sites shut down after attacks like Pahalgam.

"Peace" here means surviving—not thriving.


Day to day update 

Today (June 14, 2025), one witness told me a distressing scene—a poor woman waiting by the roadside to board a bus for her office. When she tried to approach a bus parked about 10 meters away, she was stopped and not allowed to move forward as army convoy was on other side of road 100 meter away from her. A CRPF personnel acted with complete insensitivity, denying her even the basic relief of standing in the shade to escape the scorching sun. Such incidents reflect the daily humiliation and mistreatment faced by people in Kashmir.

 

Our Question to the World

How do we define "peace" when:

  • Voices are whitewashed as "anti-national"?

  • Trauma is weaponized to force compliance?

  • Time—the one resource we all cherish—is weaponized?
    Kashmiris aren’t refusing progress; they’re denied it. Until the world sees this not as a "security issue" but a human dignity crisis, flying cars will remain a taunt from a future that excludes them.

"In Kashmir, the sky isn’t freedom—it’s another border."   

 

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