New Delhi
The intense public unrest paralyzing Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), led by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) and met with a severe state clampdown, signals a fundamental shift in the region’s political landscape. What began as a series of grassroots agitations over electricity tariffs, flour subsidies and resource allocation has evolved into a constitutional crisis over 12 legislative assembly seats reserved for non-resident refugees living across Pakistan proper.
The protests, in which people in dozens have died in police firing, political party leaders and activist declared as ‘terrorist’, has exposed a paradox at the heart of PoK’s political system.
A political discourse historically framed around self-determination is now confronting domestic questions about who is actually permitted to determine its political future.
This transition, from an abstract sovereignty dispute to a concrete debate over accountability, representation and governance, presents India with a strategic opportunity. Such an approach would complement, rather than replace, India’s longstanding legal and historical position on the former princely state. It would add a governance dimension to a debate that has traditionally been dominated by competing territorial claims.
For decades, Pakistan has sought to internationalise Kashmir as a territorial dispute. The current unrest creates an opening for India to encourage a different conversation, one centred on governance quality, institutional transparency and democratic legitimacy.
A territorial dispute is difficult to resolve because competing claims are often irreconcilable.
A governance debate is different. It places competing systems under continuous evaluation by citizens themselves. The current crisis demonstrates that while populations can tolerate disappointing economic outcomes for long periods, they increasingly reject systems that cannot transparently explain how decisions are made, how resources are allocated and who is accountable for the results.
The difference in the availability and verifiability of public data across the Line of Control is significant.
Jammu and Kashmir operates within a visible macroeconomic framework subject to scrutiny by constitutional audit mechanisms, statistical agencies and public institutions. Under budget disclosures presented before the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, the region’s nominal Gross State Domestic Product is estimated at approximately Rs 3.15 lakh crore for 2026-27. The territory recorded 2.36 crore tourist arrivals in 2024, while poverty, health, education and demographic indicators are tracked through instruments such as the National Family Health Survey and other official datasets.
The existence of publicly available data allows those outcomes to be measured, scrutinised and debated.
Cross the Line of Control into Muzaffarabad, and the information architecture changes.
PoK administration publishes documents, including its Statistical Year Book 2025.However, the region lacks the frequency, independence and bottom-up statistical depth available on the Indian side. Many assessments of the territory continue to rely on federal datasets, administrative estimates and periodic surveys rather than a comprehensive, independently auditable regional statistical system. The result is a more limited evidence base for evaluating economic performance, fiscal distribution and governance outcomes.
Most notably, it does not possess an independently produced, annualised GSDP accounting framework. Macroeconomic indicators remain heavily dependent on federal calculations and approximations generated in Islamabad. The result is an institutional distance between decision-makers and citizens that has become increasingly difficult to ignore.
That transparency deficit helps explain why economic grievances escalated into a broader constitutional confrontation.
The region hosts major hydropower infrastructure, including the 1,200 MW Mangla Dam, which contributes power to Pakistan’s national grid. Local residents have long argued that electricity tariffs do not adequately reflect the region’s role as a major hydropower producer.
At the same time, PoK remains outside the National Finance Commission framework through which federal revenues are distributed among Pakistan’s provinces. Critics argue that resource revenues and fiscal transfers remain insufficiently transparent and inadequately linked to local needs.
These concerns intensified when Islamabad was forced to announce emergency financial packages to reduce electricity charges and flour prices after widespread protests. Such measures eased immediate pressure, but did little to address the deeper question of institutional accountability.
The constitutional dispute surrounding the 12 reserved seats has further amplified the anger among the locals.
The seats are allocated to refugees from Jammu and Kashmir who reside outside the territory, primarily in Pakistan proper. Critics and local activists argue that the arrangement dilutes local representation by allowing non-resident constituencies to exercise significant influence over decisions affecting residents.
The issue acquired far greater significance when the Supreme Court of “Azad Jammu and Kashmir”, responding to a presidential reference under Article 46-A of the Interim Constitution, issued an advisory opinion holding that the 12 refugee seats could be altered, reduced or abolished only through a constitutional amendment under Article 33.
In effect, the court transformed a political dispute into a constitutional one. The ruling removed the issue from the realm of ordinary political bargaining and placed it within the foundational architecture of the territory’s representative system. By doing so, it elevated the controversy from a debate about electoral arrangements to a debate about the structure of governance itself.
That distinction matters. The significance of the current unrest lies not merely in the protests, but in the shift they represent.
Economic grievances triggered the mobilisation and constitutional questions about representation and accountability transformed it into a broader challenge to the existing political order.
To convert this moment into a long-term strategic advantage, India should move beyond rhetorical exchanges and focus on institutional comparison.
One practical step would be the creation of an annual Jammu and Kashmir Governance Report, accompanied by a Jammu and Kashmir Governance Index, produced by a consortium of universities, independent research institutes, economists, constitutional scholars, statisticians and former civil servants.
To ensure credibility, the methodology, datasets, source documents and scoring criteria should be published in full and subjected to external peer review.
The framework should cover all regions of the former princely state, including Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Using only publicly verifiable information, it could benchmark transparency, fiscal accountability, public service delivery, institutional independence and democratic representation.
The purpose would not be to determine sovereignty. It would be to measure governance.
Metrics such as local resource-revenue retention, audit transparency, fiscal distribution, public-service outcomes and the balance between resident and non-resident representation could be assessed through a consistent framework.
Over time, the report would create a longitudinal record of governance performance that journalists, researchers, policymakers and international organisations could independently evaluate, while the accompanying index would provide a simple benchmark for year-on-year comparison.
For decades, the Kashmir debate has largely revolved around competing historical claims and competing assertions of sovereignty. The current unrest suggests that a different set of questions is beginning to emerge inside PoK itself: who governs, who benefits, who is represented and who is accountable. That shift may prove more consequential than the immediate controversy over 12 seats.
Without prejudice to India’s existing legal and territorial claims, if the centre of gravity of the debate increasingly includes governance in PoK, systems of administration will be judged not only by the strength of their claims but by the quality of their institutions
India’s opportunity lies in demonstrating, through transparent and independently verifiable evidence, the comparative strength of its own governance model.