Dealing with militancy is not a task for security forces alone

J&K Governor S P Malik’s long political experience may help in his new job

On August 22, amid Eid celebrations, came another reminder of the fraught environment in the Valley. Three policemen and a BJP worker were killed, in separate incidents, allegedly by militants. The death toll on Eid is symbolic of the enormous challenges Satya Pal Malik faces as he takes over as the new Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Ever since the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani in 2016, a new wave of militancy and a new idiom of agitation and protest, arguably the strongest since at least 2010, if not the 1990s, gripped the state. The anger among the young, their alienation and disenchantment, must be addressed head-on by the political class, which itself seems to have become trapped in an isolationism broken only by the scramble for power.

Mr Malik is the first career politician in nearly three decades to be appointed Governor of J&K — his recent predecessors were either bureaucrats or military men. As he enters the Raj Bhavan in Srinagar, therefore, he will hopefully bring to the table a flexibility that can help break the frozen silences and expand the spaces for engagement in the state. As the bridge between the state and the Centre, as a constitutional functionary who can use his high office to apply the healing touch, Governor Malik must tread with care. He must help lay the ground for the resumption of the political process in the state.