Institutional Entropy

The picture of today’s Chinese factories is very different from the one we used to see in the past few decades. In present-day Chinese factories, alongside workers, there are robots, automated production lines, engineers and software systems. This image makes one realize that China’s role is not limited to being the world’s factory anymore. It is undergoing significant transformation that tells a story of a forward-looking vision. Now, China is moving from simply manufacturing products designed elsewhere to developing the technologies, brands and ideas behind tomorrow’s global economy.  There was a time when the words “Made in China” were associated with China’s role as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. At that time, “Made in China” also represented a shift of China from merely a developing economy to a country widely known for mass production, affordable products and competitive prices. Whether it be clothes, toys, household goods or electronics, Chinese factories became an essential part of global supply chains. But China didn’t stop there. China considered going through a new transition after realizing that the world’s economic patterns were shifting and that new innovations and technologies were taking center stage. It was a change from merely producing goods for other people to developing its own technologies, brands, and business strategies. It was not a small change. It made sure that future should not only be defined by “Made in China”, but increasingly by “Innovated in China”.  China’s journey of becoming the world trading powerhouse began in 2001 when it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). Within just eight years, China became the world’s largest exporter of goods. By 2013, it had taken the top position in total trade. Today, China’s total imports and exports are worth more than $6 trillion. Its manufacturing strength has given companies around the world access to competitive products and has helped make global trade faster and more affordable. But the more interesting story today is what China is producing through its own innovation. Electric vehicles (EV) industry is the best example that reflects this shift towards “Innovated in China”. In 1951, BYD was established as a domestic manufacturer. Over the years, BYD developed into a Chinese multinational company and the leader of the global EV industry. It is not just a manufacturer anymore but a company that makes its own ideas, develops its own technology and makes its own electric vehicles and batteries. It has created its footprint in global markets like South Asia, South East Asia, Europe, Latin America and other regions. Chinese electric cars are now being recognized more for their battery tech, design, software and performance, and not just their price. China has also built a huge domestic market for electric vehicles, giving its companies an environment in which they can improve rapidly. A similar change can be seen in renewable energy. China produces large number of solar panels, batteries, and other green technologies. All these steps make China a major driving force in clean energy industry. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China controls over 80% to 90% of every single key stage of the global solar supply chain, that makes it an undisputed global leader in solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing. This matters far beyond China. Lower-cost solar equipment has helped countries around the world expand renewable energy and pursue their climate goals. China’s strength in batteries is particularly important. Batteries are the beating heart of electric vehicles, energy storage and, increasingly, modern electricity systems. The Chinese companies have poured money into research on batteries and into increasing production. Companies such as CATL have become key suppliers to international automobile manufacturers. In this sense, Chinese innovation is no longer simply about producing a finished product; it is increasingly about supplying the technology that makes the next generation of global industries possible. Another important example is high-speed rail. China has developed the world’s largest high-speed railway network, connecting major cities across the country. Now, China’s experience and expertise can be used internationally. Chinese companies have participated in railway projects and infrastructure development in different parts of the world. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China has also increased economic connections through investment and infrastructure cooperation. Digital technology is another area where China has moved from follower to innovator. Chinese companies have developed globally competitive platforms in e-commerce, digital payments, logistics and telecommunications. The widespread use of mobile payments in Chinese cities is a real-life example. Consumers can pay for food, transport and everyday purchases using their phones, while businesses can reach customers through sophisticated digital platforms. This innovation is supported by a huge domestic market. With more than 1.4 billion people, China provides its companies with an enormous testing ground. A new product or service can reach millions of users quickly. Companies that succeed at home can then adapt their products for international markets. This combination of scale, manufacturing capacity, engineering talent and growing research investment gives China a unique position in global trade. China’s investment in research and development also reflects this shift. Data from the World Bank show that China’s research and development spending has risen substantially over the past two decades. China is also among the world’s leading countries in patent applications. The sheer number of patents is not a measure of quality of innovation, but of the scale of China’s technological activity. This could be a very significant change for international trade. Globalization, in future, will not only be dependent on large factories producing inexpensive goods. It will increasingly be about technology, clean energy, AI, advance manufacturing, digital services and sophisticated supply chains. China is already very well positioned in many of these areas.  This does not mean China will replace every other manufacturing or technology center. International trade works best when countries specialize, compete and cooperate at the same time. China will continue to import raw materials, energy, technology and components while exporting finished products, machinery and increasingly sophisticated technologies. Its success will also create opportunities for businesses in developing countries that become part of Chinese-linked supply

As Pakistan prepares to celebrate another Independence Day, standard national rituals will once again take center stage. Flag-hoisting ceremonies, parades, and patriotic broadcasts will dominate the public square. Yet, nearly eight decades after gaining political freedom, a quiet but deeply uncomfortable question persists: can a nation truly consider itself sovereign if its collective mind remains dependent on the ideas, technologies, and scientific outputs of others? ​True independence has never been merely a matter of drawing borders, raising flags, or maintaining standing armies. History teaches a relentless lesson: physical sovereignty is only a shell. It requires intellectual and scientific self-reliance to give it genuine substance and endurance. Without a thriving culture of critical inquiry, rigorous research, and technological innovation, political freedom gradually degrades into a ceremonial phrase. ​Today, Pakistan faces a severe, structural crisis within its higher education system—one that poses a direct threat to its national sovereignty and economic survival. Not a single Pakistani university currently features among the top 200 or 300 institutions in major global academic rankings, such as QS or Times Higher Education. This is far more than an embarrassing statistic for university administrators. It is an alarm bell signaling deep vulnerabilities in national security, economic resilience, and the country’s collective capacity to navigate a complex world. ​We live in an era where global power and national influence are defined by knowledge economies, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and rapid technological innovation. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s universities are collapsing under the combined weight of severe budget cuts, outdated curricula, heavy-handed bureaucratic interference, and deeply flawed research incentives. Unless our academic institutions move away from acting as simple credential-issuing factories and transform into centers of genuine learning and problem-solving, Pakistan’s economic and political sovereignty will remain precarious. A country that relies permanently on foreign intellect, imported technology, and international financial institutions to address its core domestic problems cannot claim to be truly self-reliant. ​This decline is not a matter of subjective opinion; it is confirmed by hard empirical evidence. Over 250 public and private universities operate across Pakistan, yet the state allocates a meager 0.24 to 0.28 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to higher education. This represents a small fraction of the 2 percent minimum recommended by UNESCO for developing nations attempting to build sustainable economies. Regional peers made strategic investments in research and technology decades ago, turning their universities into powerful engines of industrial growth. In contrast, persistent funding cuts in Pakistan have left public-sector universities financially paralyzed, with many administrators openly struggling to pay staff pensions or procure basic laboratory chemicals and equipment. ​Even more damaging than the financial deficit is the systemic decay in research quality. While university faculty publish thousands of papers every year to meet promotion targets under the Tenure Track System, the vast majority of these publications carry little to no global impact or citation value. A desperate chase for publication numbers, driven by artificial metrics and a reliance on low-tier journals, has fostered a superficial academic culture disconnected from real-world application. Our university research rarely addresses the pressing structural challenges facing the nation, whether in climate adaptation, agricultural productivity, public health, water management, or industrial manufacturing. ​The most tragic consequence of this intellectual and institutional stagnation is the unprecedented wave of brain drain draining the nation’s potential. According to official emigration statistics, over two million educated and skilled young Pakistanis—including doctors, software engineers, data scientists, chemists, and academics—have left the country in recent years. They are not emigrating simply in pursuit of higher salaries; they are fleeing a system characterized by political nepotism, lack of merit, poor infrastructure, and a hostile environment for creative thought. When a state fails to retain its best minds, it surrenders its future. Universities continue to churn out hundreds of thousands of graduates annually, but a vast proportion remain unemployable because their education has failed to equip them with critical thinking skills or modern technological competencies. Without a functional, collaborative link between universities, local industry, and government policymakers—the classic Triple Helix model—talks of economic self-reliance remain empty political rhetoric. ​Reclaiming intellectual sovereignty requires a candid national assessment and decisive, structural policy changes. First, state funding for higher education must be incrementally raised to at least 1.5 percent of GDP over a defined roadmap. Crucially, at least half of these new funds should be explicitly ring-fenced away from brick-and-mortar civil construction and directed toward modernizing scientific laboratories, subscribing to international scientific databases, and establishing dedicated national centers for artificial intelligence, biotechnology, renewable energy, and cybersecurity. ​Second, university governance requires immediate, radical overhaul. The Higher Education Commission and individual university senates must be insulated from bureaucratic red tape and political appointments. Vice-Chancellors and senior academic leaders should be selected through transparent, merit-based international searches, prioritizing proven scientific achievement and visionary management over political connections or administrative seniority. ​Third, the criteria for evaluating faculty performance must be completely overhauled. The current practice of rewarding sheer publication volume should be replaced with a system that prioritizes research quality, international citations, industrial patents, technology transfers, and solutions that solve tangible domestic problems. ​Finally, Pakistan must systematically engage its vast academic diaspora. Rather than lamenting brain drain, the state should build a structured “Brain Gain” program. By offering competitive joint research grants, flexible digital teaching platforms, and adjunct faculty positions, Pakistan can enable its top scholars abroad to transfer cutting-edge global science back into domestic universities without requiring them to relocate permanently. ​Patriotism in the twenty-first century cannot be measured by emotional slogans, ceremonial rallies, or flag-hoisting displays. It requires building objective competence in science, technology, and critical thought. If our universities fail to become spaces of innovation, inquiry, and problem-solving, Pakistan will remain perpetually dependent on foreign aid, external loans, and imported knowledge. Modern national defense is built not only along physical borders, but within classrooms, research laboratories, and libraries. Reforming higher education is not a luxury or a secondary policy goal; it is the single most logical path toward securing a dignified, sovereign, and prosperous future for the nation.

To watch Shakarparian today is to mourn a broken promise. Not a fleeting vow, but a masterplan—conceived with purpose, codified on paper, and abandoned by design. I went through archives at Bazar Road, Iqbal Hall G-7, poring over the original master plan drawn up in 1960 by the great Greek architect and city planner Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis and his team. It was there that I first understood what Shakarparian was always meant to be. Doxiadis and his fellow planners did not design this triangle-shaped green expanse near Zero Point as an afterthought, a leftover patch of land between roads. They designated it, deliberately and explicitly, as the lungs of Islamabad — a temperature regulator, a natural sound barrier, a groundwater recharge zone, and a protective forest without which the city’s clean air was never meant to exist. This was not sentiment. This was engineering. And we have spent the decades since betraying it. Islamabad in 1961 was home to barely 117,000 people. Today it holds well over 2.4 million. That growth was not an accident — it was, in part, the very success of Doxiadis’s vision: a green, livable, breathable capital that drew people in from across the country and beyond. But success has a cruel irony here, because the same city that grew because of its green lungs has spent decades quietly cutting into them. Between 1961 and 2024, Islamabad’s temperature has already climbed by 5 degrees Celsius, with projections warning of a further 0.7 degrees by 2039 and 2.2 degrees by 2069. This is the urban heat island effect, and it is not an abstraction — it is Doxiadis’s temperature regulator being dismantled, piece by piece, exactly as he warned it must not be. Shakarparian itself covers roughly 1,376 hectares, formally absorbed into the Margalla Hills National Park in 1980, sitting almost at the very heart of the capital — an emerald set into the city’s crown, as it deserves to be called. A biodiversity survey conducted in November 2014 found 155 animal species sheltering within it: 23 species of mammals, 104 species of birds spanning 16 orders and 42 families, 22 species of reptiles, and 6 species of amphibians. The same survey catalogued more than 661 plant species across 28 families, with six distinct dominant vegetation communities knitting the forest floor together. This is not a park. This is a living, breathing ecological archive sitting in the geographic center of a national capital — a rarity almost nowhere else replicated in the world. It was Roedad Khan — the legendary civil servant and statesman — who understood the fragility of this inheritance early enough to act. In 1989 he founded the Margalla Hills Society, and for decades that institution has done more than most government departments to keep the wider Margalla ecosystem intact. But Shakarparian, sitting apart within it, has not been so fortunate. It has instead become a recurring casualty of the very authority meant to protect it — the Capital Development Authority itself. Piece by piece, lease by lease, CDA has allowed Shakarparian’s protective forest cover to be carved away. Look at what now occupies ground that was meant to remain forest: the Parade Ground, the Pak-China Friendship Centre, the Islamabad Club, the Gun and Country Club, Lok Virsa, an open-air theatre, and a string of upscale hotels and restaurants. Each addition was, in its own file, justified. Together, they are a forest reduced to a backdrop for institutions that no longer need it and increasingly cannot coexist with it. This has happened in direct violation of Regulation 4(3)(b) of the ICT Zoning Regulations of Islamabad, which exists for the explicit purpose of preventing exactly this kind of land-use change, allegedly under sustained political pressure. Satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel spanning the last twenty years tells the story without need for further commentary: the southwest region of Shakarparian shows a stark, measurable retreat of forest cover. The judiciary, at least once, was willing to look squarely at this. On January 11, 2022, the Islamabad High Court delivered its verdict in Prof. Zahid Baig Mirza versus Capital Development Authority, and the ruling was unambiguous: the shifting of the Parade Ground into Zone 3, the widening of roads through the forest, and the construction of the China Friendship Centre inside Shakarparian all violated the ICT Zoning Regulations. It was, on paper, a vindication of everything Doxiadis intended and everything CDA had ignored. A court verdict that is not enforced, however, is simply another document gathering dust the way the original master plan itself so nearly did. And here I have to say something that will not make me popular in certain circles of this city: the NGO sector stationed in Islamabad has failed Shakarparian as thoroughly as CDA has bulldozed it. The single biggest failure of these organizations is that they will not raise their own voice — they wait, always, for the government to raise it first, as though advocacy requires official permission. That is not activism. That is choreography. Too many of these NGOs are, in practice, family businesses wearing the language of conservation: leadership passed quietly within the same households for years, boards that never rotate, and a business model built not around planting a single tree in Shakarparian but around producing glossy reports, attending conferences, and mastering the art of recycling the same handful of buzzwords — resilience, sustainability, nature-based solutions — into slightly different sentences for slightly different donors. They are experts in rephrasing a crisis. They are not experts in stopping one. When the chainsaws reached the H-8 green belt, it was a lone campaigner and a worried student who spoke up first, not the well-funded organisations whose entire mandate is supposed to be exactly this. This failure is made worse by the fact that the government itself is not short of obligations it has already signed onto. Pakistan is a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which binds it to conserve representative ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement (MJDA) to strengthen their defense cooperation. The agreement was signed at a critical juncture in history, both globally and regionally. On the global front, the old order is in disarray, and conflicts are breaking out one after another. The West’s dominance and hegemony are fading. Economic power, which the West once used to rule the world, is in decline. Western control over weapons of destruction has weakened. Simultaneously, Western diplomatic influence has softened, and their grip on the UN and decision-making has weakened.    This has destabilized global peace, and in 2025 alone, 50 countries were engaged in conflicts or wars. As a result, new powerhouses, in economic, diplomatic, and defense production, have emerged. On a regional level, the Middle East and South Asia have emerged as flashpoints, where conflict or war can break out at any time due to the reckless behavior of Israel and India in their respective regions.    In this context, the signing of the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement has raised many questions, and people are exploring possible answers. First, what does the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement include? According to available information at this time, the three Muslim countries have joined hands to strengthen their defense cooperation. It sends a strong message to opponents and enemies that any attack on Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Turkey will be treated as an attack on all. The aggressor will have to face the wrath of three powers.    Second, why is it important? It is important for two reasons. First, three countries are in hostile regions and face numerous security challenges. Let’s start with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is in a region where Israel is committing the worst genocide in modern history. The genocide in Gaza has destabilized the whole region. Unconditional support from the USA and the West allows Israel to continue the genocide in Gaza with complete immunity. They are providing all types of weapons of mass destruction and financial support to Israel. Even the USA and some Western countries are threatening the International Court of Justice or other UN agencies for asking for accountability of Israel. The USA and Israel’s attack on Iran has further complicated the situation. Iranian attacks on regional countries in the context of US bases are threatening a wide-scale war in the region. Saudi Arabia is also facing direct attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia, especially on oil installations, which pose serious threats to the whole region.     For Pakistan, it has two hostile neighbors, India and Afghanistan. In 2025, India attacked Pakistan based on self-assumed allegations. However, a strong, full-scale retaliation from Pakistan compelled India to come to its knees. Pakistan destroyed many Indian fighter jets and missile systems. India rushed to the USA to beg for a ceasefire. On the other border, Pakistan is facing terrorism originating from Afghanistan. Afghanistan, with the support of India and Israel, has launched a full-scale proxy and terrorism war. It is also harboring terrorist groups such as BLA, TTP, etc. India, acting as a proxy of Israel, is providing full support to terrorists and fueling terrorism in Pakistan.   In the case of Turkey, it is facing multiple threats, including direct threats from Israel, Greece, and some regional proxies. Over the past few months, Israel has begun to portray Turkey as a new threat to Israel. Greece has also been encouraged by Israel and other Western powers to create problems for Turkey. Some Western countries also have historical grievances with Turkey and are seeking opportunities to harm it.    Therefore, this agreement is extremely important for the three countries and for both regions, the Middle East and South Asia.    Third, how will regional countries react, and what impact will the MJDA have on the region? First, Israel will not like it at all. Why? Because it will view it as a hurdle to creating a Greater Israel. Therefore, Israel will do everything to sabotage the agreement. It can use this agreement to create a sectarian divide in the region by portraying Iran as the enemy. It can conspire to instigate sectarian violence in the region, especially in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey. The USA and Western countries can also join hands to facilitate Israel. President Trump’s recent statement on the potential role of Syria in tackling the issue of Hezbollah is a strong indication of this strategy. He is urging Israel to stop attacking Lebanon and let the Syrian government fight Hezbollah. Lastly, Israel can also exploit the civilizational context and emotions of the custodians of the Arab, Iranian, and Turkish civilizations. It can trigger feelings of self-greatness and urge each civilization to pursue past glory.     Simultaneously, some elements in Iran, especially those pro-Israel or influenced by Israel, can propagate the MJDA against Iranian interests. They can argue that it will undermine Iran’s status and create hurdles for Iran to become the region’s major power. Proponents of this view can argue that, in the presence of this alliance, it will be difficult for Iran to dominate the region. It would be an ideal situation for Israel and other elements to create a divide along sectarian lines and fan sectarian violence in the region and in respective countries. Therefore, all countries (Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) need to be extremely vigilant and coordinate closely.     Fourth, what would be the reaction of the global community, especially from the USA and China? China and the USA are important because they are major powers at this point in time. First, I do not believe the USA will have an independent view or reaction. It is strongly suspected, rather sure, that Israel will dictate the American response. It is an open secret that Israel does not want peace and stability in the region. Thus, the USA will follow this policy.    It is also in the USA’s interest. How and why? The USA considers the Middle East and South Asia vital to

In the digital era, crime has drastically transformed. These days, planned disinformation operations, hate speech, deepfakes and misinformation spread more quickly than traditional crimes, eroding public confidence, escalating tensions within communities and, in severe situations, inciting actual bloodshed. Police must change to protect the information environment as well, since Pakistan’s digital footprint keeps growing. Acknowledging the evolving security environment, Regional Police Officer (RPO) Sohail Akhtar Sukhera has established a Cyber Patrolling Cell in District Jhang as a pioneer model for the Faisalabad Region. By keeping an eye on dangerous online content, spotting emerging digital risks, recording evidence and organising prompt responses through legal processes, the initiative represents a shift from reactive policing to intelligence-led prevention. The framework emphasises adherence to existing legal safeguards while providing clearly defined monitoring categories, reporting channels and escalation procedures. The significance of this initiative extends beyond the boundaries of the Faisalabad Region. It reflects a reality increasingly recognised by law enforcement agencies worldwide: the internet has become an operational domain of public safety. Within hours, a fake video, manipulated image or coordinated disinformation campaign can generate fear, inflame sectarian tensions, undermine institutional legitimacy or provoke violence. Preventing harm in both physical and digital environments has therefore become an essential responsibility of modern policing. Cyber patrolling has already been integrated into contemporary law enforcement in several countries. The European Union’s Digital Services Act requires major digital platforms to mitigate systemic risks arising from coordinated misinformation and illegal content, while Europol strengthens cross-border cyber intelligence. Singapore, through the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), combines legal intervention with public digital literacy campaigns to counter online deception. The United Arab Emirates employs AI-driven cybercrime teams and real-time threat intelligence to combat online extremism and hate speech. In South Asia, Kerala Police’s Cyberdome demonstrates how collaboration among law enforcement agencies, cyber security professionals and academic institutions can strengthen cyber threat intelligence, digital forensics, online fraud investigations and disinformation monitoring. By identifying rumours, verifying information and reducing public panic during emergencies, Cyberdome has emerged as one of the region’s leading cyber policing models. Against this international backdrop, the Cyber Patrolling Cell established by RPO Sohail Akhtar Sukhera represents an important step towards institutionalising digital policing in Pakistan. While still evolving, it demonstrates an understanding that policing must anticipate threats before they materialise rather than merely responding after damage has occurred. However, technology alone cannot counter disinformation. International experience demonstrates that successful cyber patrolling depends upon robust institutions, specialised expertise and public trust. Pakistan should therefore consider several complementary reforms. First, dedicated Digital Threat Intelligence Units should be established within police organisations, integrating cyber investigators, OSINT analysts, digital forensic experts and behavioural analysts capable of identifying coordinated online influence operations. Second, law enforcement agencies should invest in artificial intelligence-assisted monitoring systems capable of detecting bot networks, coordinated disinformation campaigns, multilingual hate speech and AI-generated deepfake content while ensuring meaningful human oversight over enforcement decisions. Third, closer institutional collaboration is essential. Provincial police, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, universities, technology companies and civil society organisations should operate through an integrated digital information-sharing mechanism. Cyber threats rarely respect institutional or provincial boundaries. Fourth, specialised partnerships with universities and research institutions should support continuous officer training in cyber intelligence, digital forensics, artificial intelligence and data analytics. Institutions such as NUST, FAST, Information Technology University Lahore and other research centres possess expertise that can strengthen law enforcement capacity. Fifth, transparent oversight mechanisms are indispensable. Periodic public reporting, independent legal oversight and clearly defined operational protocols can ensure that cyber patrolling remains lawful, proportionate and fully consistent with constitutional guarantees relating to freedom of expression and privacy. Effective cyber policing should enhance democratic resilience rather than weaken it. Finally, equal attention should be given to digital literacy. Citizens who can verify information, recognise manipulated content, identify deepfakes and report online abuse become active participants in protecting the information ecosystem. Public resilience remains the strongest defence against organised deception. The strategic importance of the information domain has surpassed that of physical infrastructure. Just as police patrol streets to deter conventional crime, responsible cyber patrolling has become essential to protecting democratic institutions, social cohesion and national security. Digital policing has become a fundamental responsibility of contemporary law enforcement, and Pakistan can no longer afford to treat it as an optional function. The Cyber Patrolling Cell established under the leadership of RPO Faisalabad Sohail Akhtar Sukhera should be viewed not merely as a regional initiative but as a policy experiment capable of informing Pakistan’s broader digital policing strategy. Strengthened through advanced technology, specialised training, transparent oversight and interagency cooperation, it offers a practical road map for developing a nationally integrated cyber patrolling framework that safeguards both public security and democratic resilience in the digital age.

By Ahmad Hassan “The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other… Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: ‘I feed on your energy.’” When Frank Herbert wrote those words in his novel Dune Messiah, he observed that elaborate euphemisms are often used by the state to conceal the raw mechanics of power. In Pakistan, August 5 is observed as Youm-e-Istehsal to condemn the 2019 revocation of Article 370 and its supplementary provision, Article 35A. This act of the Indian government removed Kashmir’s separate constitution, its flag and its control over its own affairs. Last week marked seven years since that day. What began as a dramatic constitutional rupture has now, by design, become quietly normalized. Jammu and Kashmir joined India in 1947 on defined terms. The Maharaja handed over defence, foreign affairs and communications. Everything else stayed with the state. The United Nations later called for a plebiscite. It never happened. Instead, over decades, the protections that were supposed to stand in its place were worn down piece by piece, until August 5, 2019, when the government removed what remained in a single stroke. The method deserves more attention than it usually gets. Article 370 was not directly changed. First, the government reached for Article 367, which was intended to aid in the interpretation of the Constitution, and used it to redefine one phrase: “Constituent Assembly” became “Legislative Assembly.” Kashmir had no sitting assembly at the time, and the state was under President’s Rule. So, the government’s own appointee, the Governor, signed off on the change. India’s Supreme Court had already ruled, in 1959 and again in 1969, that Kashmir’s constitutional status could only be changed after the approval of the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir. When that body no longer existed, no institution had the standing to give that consent on Kashmir’s behalf. New Delhi decided that its own Governor could stand in for the people he had not been elected by. That is not consent. It is a government consenting to itself. The Indian government argued that Kashmiris had lived for decades under an insurgency that killed tens of thousands and emptied the Valley of its Pandit community in 1990. It left the region isolated from the investment and policing coordination. That argument would carry more weight if the method had matched it. What followed the revocation was not the language of integration. It was a total communications blackout, landlines and mobile networks and the internet all cut at once. Independent estimates put the troop presence at 600,000 to 800,000, roughly one soldier for every ten Kashmiris. Even pro-India politicians, former chief ministers among them, were placed under detention. Perhaps a security argument can justify counter-insurgency operations. It cannot by itself justify dissolving a state’s constitutional status, its legislature and its statehood in one move. That too with no elected Kashmiri voice given the chance to object. Jawaharlal Nehru warned Parliament about exactly this shortcut in 1952, while Article 370 was still being drafted. No clause in a constitution, he said, could substitute for the will of the Kashmiri people. Real integration, in his words, comes from the mind and the heart, not from a clause imposed from outside. Actually, there is a longer, quieter project behind the legal manoeuvre. Article 35A once barred outsiders from buying land or settling permanently in Kashmir. Since its removal, more than 3.2 million domicile certificates have gone to outsiders, most of them non-Kashmiri Hindus. This alarming thing is that wherever a disputed territory’s demographics are reshaped before its people are asked what they want, the eventual vote, if one ever comes, no longer reflects the population whose future was originally in question. None of this required an invading army, or an open declaration of intent. It required a redefined word, a signature from an appointee, and a great deal of time. The convoluted legalisms that Herbert warned about have become policy in Kashmir: development, integration, correction. Each euphemism has quietly done the work that an honest admission of purpose could never have achieved. Seven years on, Kashmir’s assembly has voted decisively against the BJP that carried out the revocation, and passed its own resolution demanding the restoration of its special status. New Delhi can easily ignore them. Yet, that very power to ignore an elected legislature proves, beyond any doubt, that the “consent” obtained seven years ago was always a legal fiction