Daily Diary (DD) - Day 21 of 2024

1053hrs:

I managed to reverse the setback yesterday by waking up at 0815hrs despite sleeping after 0200hrs. I feel as fresh as needed and thus the 6hrs in 24 needed for recharging one's body and soul proves to be suffice.

I visited the local masjid which happens to be next to my house to seek permission for making an announcement on their loudspeaker to alert the surrounding villages to a public meeting at 1400hrs today in reference to maintaining cleanliness of public space in the local bazaar. The message we received from the Imaam was that guidelines from the Aghaar Darbaar at Kotli (which administers a lot of masaajid in this region) restrict loudspeaker use to the announcements of funerals.

Cleanliness is widely known as 'half of faith' according to Islam and masaajid are supposed to provide community service. Much has to be done for the living, more so than those who have deceased. I relayed this to an uncle of mine to try and speak to the Imaam to address this societal deficiency.

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JKNIA (Jammu Kashmir National Independence Alliance) has begun regularly conducting webinars on Zoom to address our lingering 'national question' in the wake of an ongoing rights movement in AJK and Gilgit Baltistan. I have had the privilege of being invited to speak on a number of occasions:

Actual Webinar:

Some notes that I made during the programme:

I have taken a public policy approach from the outset in 2005....coming from a background of international journalism and parliamentary correspondence.

Narrative (Agency of the people)

Sovereignty (Have majority of Riyasatis residing in the territory and have legal title via people's reference)

Representative Character (Public Assembly with proportional representation of all parts beginning in AJK and giving seats to all other parts of the erstwhile State gradually)

There are many people, many parties/organisations/alliances/committees/councils but there is an argument that none of them are recognised.....I would argue many enjoy some form of recognition but representative character is missing. We do have globally recognised talent in all fields but we haven't utilised them....conducting our own population census and referendum is the beginning of that process.

India and Pakistan claim to have representative character in the shape of governments/regimes on their respectively controlled sides.

You can overcome all powers (regional & international) with direct democracy....people's opinion + people's resources = people's control of public policy

Baba Jaan - As he lives in the most strategic part of JKA and thus has explained the problem in a nutshell and has given the prescription in a nutshell too.

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