An instrument of integration and a mediating institution on the ground has been considerably weakened

Haseeb A Drabu

THE merger of the Jammu and Kashmir cadre into AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories) in 2021 and the recent appointment of the first AGMUT-cadre officer as Chief Secretary denote more than a change of personnel or the supersession of many senior officers. An institution that had long mediated access to State authority and resources in the Valley stands replaced.

The overhaul of the bureaucracy forms part of a wider effort to change the local configurations of power and influence. The J&K cadre functioned not only as an administrative tier but also as a network of personal ties, political affiliations and institutional memory.

This network was shaped by decades of interaction with the region’s political class. It facilitated and even enabled the reproduction of local power structures at the interface between society and the State. The bureaucracy wielded an embedded influence through which regional elites reinforced prevailing power hierarchies.

By superseding almost all seniormost officers of that cadre, decisive authority has been shifted to those drawn from outside its ranks. By doing so, the Centre has effectively mutated the administrative DNA of J&K. In a way, it completes the institutional eclipse of the J&K cadre.

This cadre was a consequence of the Presidential Order issued in 1958 under Article 370 of the Constitution. It specifically modified the application of Article 312 to bring J&K within the All-India Services framework and enabled recruitment and service conditions for the IAS (and IPS). The J&K Reorganisation Act of 2019 initially allowed the J&K cadre, but the 2021 ordinance merged it into AGMUT.

The J&K cadre structure of the local bureaucratic framework was rooted in domain knowledge, a certain continuity of administrative practice and personal networks. These have been now displaced by a more externally directed apparatus. It is a reconfiguration of the institutions through which power is exercised and legitimacy is mediated in the region.

The IAS officers, mostly outsiders, were a crucial link between the Centre and the state. While these officers were the eyes, ears and hands of New Delhi, they also played the role of intermediaries. With their feet on the ground in Kashmir, many of them conveyed the local sentiment in their communication to Delhi. Over time, representing the Kashmir sentiment got identified with the constitutional status of the state and the autonomist ideology of political parties. Warts and all, the cadre was as much an instrument of control as it was a channel of influence.

Gradually, it was felt that the cadre had been co-opted by the local political class, especially by the National Conference (NC) under Farooq Abdullah. During his tenure as CM, some officers who had powers beyond ordinary bureaucratic limits acted like the card-carrying members of the NC. Their proximity to a regional political dynasty largely influenced the bureaucracy’s approach to Kashmir.

Around 1989-90, when protests and public uprisings were at their peak, at least four of the seniormost officers were signatories to a representation addressed to the United Nations, protesting against human rights violations by security forces in the Valley. At least six IAS officers of the local cadre also submitted a report to the Governor, condemning excesses by the men in uniform against civilians. A memorandum by senior officers reached the Governor after the assassination of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq and the subsequent firing on mourners.

While Kashmiris later remembered the gesture fondly, critics within the establishment saw it as an instance in which serving officers of the All-India Services publicly aligned with the local sentiment against the actions of the Indian security apparatus. Delhi saw such instances as serious chinks in the Steel Frame. The national purpose of the Services as an administrative backbone that could rise above regional political alignments was steadily eroded.

The post-2021 structure has systematically reduced the space for officers who had both long local tenures and career incentives tied to the region. Once the last cohort with significant Valley socialisation exits around 2029, the channel that carried local sentiment upward (however imperfectly) will narrow further. This is less a question of individual officers’ attitudes and more a structural outcome of shorter average tenures and joint-cadre career paths.

The J&K-cadre officers, though outsiders, frequently shared the outlook of the dominant political class on questions of autonomy, land, employment and security. Of course, there were exceptions; some were viewed with suspicion.

This proximity eventually led to a certain bureaucratisation of politics. The pattern of co-option resulted in at least three former Chief Secretaries joining politics after (or even before completing) their tenures. While two became legislators, one became the finance minister. These transitions illustrate how the top of the service had become a revolving door into regional politics rather than a permanent national Steel Frame.

These structural features explain why the cadre merger of 2021 and the recent appointments and consequential change are read by many as more than administrative rationalisation. They are understood as a dismantling of an institution whose interests had become aligned with local political power.

The decimation of the J&K cadre is therefore double-edged. On the one hand, it removes officers who had deep local domain knowledge, be it of the revenue system, forest settlements, irrigation, power and the historical sediment of special status. On the other hand, it removes a cadre that had, in critical periods, become a channel to communicate the local sentiment.

Whether this produces better governance is an open question. An administration less entangled with local political regimes may prove more responsive to national priorities. It may also prove less capable of reading the social and historical texture of the territory it administers.

Once the last substantial cohort of the old IAS cadre departs around 2029, the Union Territory will be governed by a bureaucracy whose professional formation took place largely elsewhere and whose political allegiances will no longer be those of a co-opted state cadre.

That is the structural choice now being made. It resolves one long-standing problem of politicisation only by creating a new problem of administrative distance. In a region where history is an active force, the distance is not costless.

Such a reconfiguration of the bureaucracy as the principal instrument of governance signals that the restoration of full statehood — requiring the return of cadre autonomy and political control over the civil service — remains deferred well beyond 2029. The institutional architecture now in place treats the administrative apparatus itself as the durable mechanism of authority, rendering the revival of state-cadre independence a distant prospect.

The return of cadre autonomy and political control over the civil service is not merely one among several requirements of statehood — it is the necessary starting point for any genuine process of restoration. Without the capacity to direct the permanent executive, an elected government cannot exercise effective authority over the institutions that implement policies and allocate resources.

Credit: Greater Kashmir