Daily Diary (DD) - Day 241 of 2022

1841hrs:

Day 85 at Maqbool Bhat Shaheed Square - Dadyaal.

0843hrs

My punctuality deficit has increased to 183 minutes.

Punctuality percentage: 44 days late of 85 = 52% late

One thing is certain. Whenever I have to travel out of Dadyaal the odds of me being late the next morning increase exponentially. It is remarkable that the gains I made yesterday morning were cancelled out precisely today. That is, I arrived at 0717hrs yesterday and thus decreased my punctuality deficit by 43 minutes. Today, I was precisely 43 minutes late!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my work it is important to understand that I have spent 85 days in a row - without a break - between 0800hrs and 1000hrs at Maqbool Bhat Martyr's Square in Dadyaal. Unfortunately, I have not been punctual on every single day and thus am trying to close the punctuality deficit by arriving earlier than 0800hrs, at every opportunity. I have managed to peg back the deficit from a low of 580 minutes to what it is today viz. 182 minutes.

It may even be in order to make a comparison between the number of days that I've been punctual versus the number of days I haven't:

....

Public Policy in AJK connecting with the world's experts in the subject at the London School of Economics:

I am sending my co-citizens this link at a critical stage of our journey towards nationhood and statehood in AJK and ultimately JKA. The 'London School of Economics' describes itself as the world's best institution for the study of Public Policy.

We now have an opportunity to enrol on an online course in our favourite and most appropriate discipline. It is also an opportunity to test our technical aptitude in this subject and compare our on-the-ground experience of 17 years and 5 months with the best of what's available in the world.

The cost to the public: c. $1,300 (US dollars)

We would also like to take this opportunity to give a broad outline of what is required from our people to design and develop a world class system of governance in AJK:

Manpower: 

1,771 - human/data management professionals

Annual Budget:

£20 million (Pound sterling) or equivalent to c. 5 billion PK rupees.

*We are converting at the rate of 250 PK rupees to the pound for simplicity. The actual rate today is c. 258

The past 75 years of occupation/administration/control by others of JKA, connected to the prevailing absence of governance in AJK coupled with the naked priorities of self interest prevalent within our public, may suggest that the broad outline given above is impractical or even illegal.

Practicality:

There are over 5 million people living in or from AJK. At least 40% (over 2 million people) of them have at least a middle-class standard of living or live above subsistence level. What we require is for 100,000 of them to pay a voluntary tax of £200 or c. 50,000 PK rupees in a year. Which amounts to less than 55 pence or less than 137 PK rupees a day.

Legality:

It should be common knowledge amongst our people that JKA is not legally or constitutionally part of any other country. The British Indian empire did not transfer suzerainty or sovereignty of this territory to any other country and neither did they retain it themselves. Furthermore, all the countries that claim or monitor this territory have conditioned their presence or involvement on the local people's reference. It is also clear that these inhabitants hold title to this territory. The Srinagar/Jammu Assembly doesn't exist in practice and the Assemblies in Gilgit and Muzaffarabad do not conform to international law (or the UN template on this region) and are not even recognised as an executive authority by their sponsor Pakistan. 

Thus, we - the people - are the masters of our own destiny. We have been waiting for the world to help us and we never gave serious thought to help ourselves or more appropriately, each other.

We have little time to waste and obviously this governance initiative cannot be implemented by force. The most this action-oriented researcher can do is publicly list those co-citizens who are familiar with this struggle for freedom & world class governance and have the means to finance it, yet deliberately refuse to do so. 

History will be their judge and ours too.

Written on 23/08/2022

Published as:

AJK Public Agency Note: #203729082022

....